Re-Imagining ClassIntersectional Perspectives on Class Identity
and Precarity in Contemporary CultureRe-Imagining ClassIntersectional Perspectives on Class Identity
and Precarity in Contemporary Culture

Edited byMichiel Rys & Liesbeth François

Leuven University PressPublished with the support of the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, YouReCa (KU Leuven
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Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Re-Imagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class
Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture

11

Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

PART 1REDISCOVERING CLASS:CONTINUITIES AND RUPTURES
1.1 Writing (for) the Precariat: Mats Teglund’s Cykelbudet(2021) and Pelle Sunvisson’s Svenska palmen (2021)

41

Magnus Nilsson

1.2 Making Visible the Invisible: Spanish Post-Crisis Fiction

59

Christian Claesson

PART 2PERSONALISING CLASS:INDIVIDUALS AND COLLECTIVES
2.1 The Poetics of Personal Authenticity: Diversity,
Intersectionality and the Working Class in Contemporary
German Literature

83

Christoph Schaub

2.2 Narrating the Precariat: Social Wounds in Terézia Mora’sand Wilhelm Genazino’s Novels

101

Olaf Berwald

2.3 “Know Where to Fish”: Class and Gender Precarity andProject-based Networks in Creative and Cultural Industries 119
Valeria Pulignano, Deborah Dean, Markieta Domecka
and Lander Vermeerbergen

6

Re-Imagining Cl ass

PART 3
NARRATING CLASS:VOICE AND BELONGING
3.1 Double(ing) Voices: Narrating Precarious Class Status
and Class Identities

149

Sula Textor

3.2 Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving: Gender andGenealogy in Contemporary German Narratives of theSocial Climber (Christian Baron, Bov Bjerg, Deniz Ohde,
Anke Stelling)

165

Irene Husser

3.3 Narrating Class and Classlessness in Contemporary
British Novels of Black Women’s Social Climbing

181

Katrin Becker

PART 4PERFORMING CLASS:
MATERIALITY AND AFFECT
4.1 Affected by Discomfort: Class and Precarity in TwentyFirst Century Theatre

203

Marissia Fragkou

4.2 The Redundancy: Playing Production in Academic
Capitalism 221
Sarah Pogoda

4.3 “The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”: A Poetics ofPrecarity in Bait (2019, Dir: Mark Jenkin)
Daniel Brookes

241contents7PART 5
CLASS BEYOND THE HUMAN:
WORK EXPERIENCES AND THE ANTHROPOCENE
5.1 Bare Land: Alienation as Deracination in Anna Tsing andJohn Steinbeck

257

Tim Christiaens

5.2 Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation

279

Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan

List of Contributors

295

Acknowledgments
This volume is the outcome of an interdisciplinary workshop on “Re-Imagining
Class: Working-Class Identity and Intersectionality in Contemporary Culture” inLeuven in May 2022. We would like to thank all speakers and attendees for their
participation and feedback on papers presented at this occasion. Furthermore,
we want to express our deepest gratitude to Hannelore Roth and Stijn De Cauwer, who co-organised this event and without whose help this book would nothave been possible. A special mention goes to Eva Gijsen, who assisted us in editing the manuscript. Finally, we want to thank YouReCa—the young researchers
career centre at KU Leuven—, the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO), the KU
Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access, and the Research Unit Literary and Cultural
Studies for their financial support, which enabled us to publish this volume in
the most democratic and accessible way possible.

Re-Imagining ClassIntersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity
in Contemporary CultureMichiel Rys and Liesbeth François

A lot has changed since the German sociologist Ulrich Beck declared class to
be one of the ‘zombie categories’ in social theory, i.e. “living dead categories,
which blind the social sciences to the rapidly changing realities” and which are
in urgent need of critical revision (2002, 24). Writing from another context, theAmerican feminist bell hooks famously noticed in 2000 that the topic of class was
not as “cool” as other questions of identity, like gender, sexual orientation andrace (2000, vii). She was just one of the many influential voices who strived toput class matters back on the agenda, and thereby made a convincing case for theneed to address them through an intersectional perspective. Now, twenty years
later, we cannot but confirm that matters have indeed changed drastically, andthat class issues are sparking renewed interest from a wide range of artists andscholars, not in the least in the domain of humanities and social sciences. Thissituation responds to a social context which is characterised by the increasing
hollowing-out of social protections that comes with the global rise of neoliberalism; as a consequence, ‘class’ re-emerged as a necessary category to make senseof social, economic and political changes more broadly. This volume is rooted in
the observation that the idea of class haunts contemporary culture, which implicitly and explicitly evokes diverse concepts of the working class, but also problematises and appropriates them to fit a more contemporary perspective. Thus,
recent engagements with class tend to draw on past traditions of working-classimaginaries but also introduce new concepts in the light of changing social realities and experiences, thereby acknowledging the need for an intersectional perspective. Through a wide range of examples from the Global North, this volume
aims to study the ways in which artworks shed light on these ongoing processesof recuperation and re-imagination, and it does so from an interdisciplinary angle that brings advancements in sociology, critical theory, working-class studies,cultural studies and artistic research into a productive dialogue.

12Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

Class and the Expansion of Precarious Work
The insistence of class imaginaries in contemporary culture, and the concept ofclass in general, might at first seem a spectral remainder of an obsolete tradition of
structuring social reality in antagonisms. Concepts of class have been adapted andtransformed in the light of substantially different socio-economic contexts. The
overt resurgence of class is first of all intrinsically related to the socio-economic
developments initiated during the global turn to neoliberalism, understood here
in the broadest sense as a set of beliefs based on the principle that the best wayof improving human well-being lies in a society entirely organised according tofree market principles (Harvey 2005, 2). This encompassing societal transformation, which started in the 1970s, has had a lasting impact on today’s crisis-ridden
societies, both in terms of labour relations and social experience. Even though
the extent of these transformations may vary in different socio-economic contexts, there is a consensus that the labour market has changed significantly on a
global level. This is the result of policy decisions in function of deregulation andflexibilisation, which have led to a general rise in insecurity among workers thatcuts across sectors. In the Global North, this situation has led to the demise of the“social compromise of industrial capitalism” made in the aftermath of the Second
World War and, subsequently, the “comeback” of the social question in Western
economies (Castel 2009, 21). As a consequence of the debilitation of the post-war
social pact, scholars have observed an evolution in recent years that gradually
introduces these societies to the structural experience of precarity and insecurity
that largely characterises employment in the Global South (Lazar 2017, 12). The
latter can be partly explained by the widespread and historically engrained character of informal labour in this region: informal and informalised labour represent more than half of the total employment rate in the Global South (Hammer
and Ness 2023, 4), while “85 percent of all new employment opportunities in theworld today are in the informal economy” (Goldstein, quoted in Poblete 2021,
216). At the same time, it should be noted that Western societies still very muchdepend on a global division of labour that relies on the availability of a cheap,
poorly protected and majorly unskilled workforce in regions that occupy secondary or directly peripheral positions with respect to the traditional centres of economic and political power (Suwandi, quoted in Hammer and Ness 2023, 6). Evenif local conditions vary significantly both between and within these spheres, thedismantling of social protections garnered renewed attention in Western societies
to the ravaging impact of uneven development and to the way in which capitalism
fundamentally depends on geographical inequality (Soja 1989, 107–117).
Due to the dismantlement of collective social safety nets in the Global North,socio-economic risks are increasingly placed on individuals, who are deemedRe-Imagining Cl ass13

to be responsible for their success and happiness in what only on a surface level
presents itself as a meritocratic, i.e. classless economy providing equal opportunities (Castel 2009, 23–27; see also Cruz 2021, 41). Taking the German context
as an example, sociologists Nicole Mayer-Ahuja and Oliver Nachtwey (2021,
13–20) retraced how the focus on individual performance and productivity has
fundamentally changed which types of work receive the most social recognition and are rewarded with the most secure and—in some cases—even generous
working conditions. What is more, they reconstruct how a self-enforcing circle,
in which deregulation and privatisation of labour result in a rise of precarious
labour contracts, has incrementally become the norm for more groups of theworkforce. They argue that these developments led to new social inequalities andput in place new class divisions, as the increase in wealth does not create better
living conditions but causes a general trend of downward social mobility (cf.
Nachtwey 2018). Furthermore, the waning of the traditional workers’ unions—
not only the traditional defenders of workers’ class interests but also importantpillars of workers’ sociability and culture—alongside the disappearance of classconcerns from the discourse of the left have led to more social isolation andthe feeling of being left behind, as Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims (2008, alsoin Jean-Gabriel Périot’s film adaptation of 2022) and Christian Baron’s Proleten.
Pöbel. Parasiten (2016) so meticulously document. The role of digital technology
in this process cannot be underestimated, as James Bridle warns us, because theincreasing tendency towards specialisation “concentrates power into the handsof an ever-smaller number of people who grasp and control these technologies”(Bridle 2018, 55). This deeply affects the lived realities and hence agency of workers, whose work gradually loses its visibility and is organised by algorithms thatare becoming ever more opaque to them.
Another element that has impacted concepts of class involves the altered nature of work itself, with the main trends being the ongoing process of de-industrialisation and the rise of the service economy and of immaterial labour,defined by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as all forms of labour that create“immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response” (2004, 108). This has happened in parallelto the sharp rise in temporary contracts, seasonal labour, the platform economy,
informal work and other schemes of atypical employment (see Christiaens 2023
for a detailed discussion of how a digitised platform economy enforces precarious labour conditions). Ulrich Beck already argued in Risk Society (first published in 1986) that class relations have receded, as “each person’s biography isremoved from given determinations and placed in his or her own hands” (1992,135), while on a professional level, a “system of pluralized, flexible decentralized
underemployment” has as a result that biographies have become more episodic

14Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François(Beck 1992, 149). On the one hand, flexibility does come with more freedom,which many perceive as a positive and which has even been deemed fundamental for workers belonging to the so-called “creative class” (Florida 2002). On theother hand, these workers often turn to entrepreneurial models in a context inwhich they are, again, insufficiently protected by state policies (e.g. García Canclini 2017) and, in this sense, become more vulnerable to market fluctuations.
Flexibility thus also comes with new challenges and risks, which are often mitigated or maximised by variables like gender and ethnicity (see Pulignano et al.
in this volume, who examine gender and race as crucial factors in the buildingof networks that determine project-driven careers in the creative industry). In
consequence, work is much less a factor of social integration and financial stability than it used to be (cf. Nachtwey 2018). Such a diagnosis not only applies tothe ‘traditional’ working class, but also to artistic, cognitive and highly educatedemployment, resulting in what Robert Castel has called “zones” of social in- andexclusion (cf. Dörre and Castel 2009, 15).
It is indeed important to stress the various degrees, stages and phases in thesetransversal processes of precarisation, because of which the working force has
become more diverse and fragmented (Castel 2009, 29–30). As a result, somegroups of workers gradually have lost their capacity to generate sufficient means
to cover basic needs and services—hence the increase in people who are (mostly
pejoratively) referred to as, for example, the ‘working poor,’ a new ‘Unterschicht’or the ‘deplorables.’ In the UK, sociologists of the London School of Economics
proposed a new “seven class model” based on “people’s experiences, attitudes
and lifestyles,” in order to “recognise […] both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers” (quoted in Radice 2015, 270). Of
course, work at the assembly line in the factory has not entirely disappeared andis still a major mode of employment globally, and many types of (seasonal) workin the food industry and in logistics—think of Amazon warehouses—can be regarded as forms of deskilled labour that continue to exist besides high-skilled
precarious work (see Christiaens and De Cauwer 2020, 118–127). In contrast,
Joshua Freeman observes a change in the prototypical figures of the working
class, arguing that “sales clerks, hospital aides, and school teachers [have become] more representative of the working class than the steelworkers, coal miners, autoworkers, and railroad men who dominated images of twentieth-century
labor” (quoted in Entin 2021, 34).
In this state of flux and diversification, class positions are more volatile: whilea growing number of people face the risk of downward social mobility, climbing the social ladder has become more competitive, yet not impossible, as demonstrated by the narratives of social climbers discussed in this volume (see thecontributions by Irene Husser and Katrin Becker). It is perhaps no coincidenceRe-Imagining Cl ass15

that a prolific body of testimonial literature by academics grapples to find a language for experiences of upward social mobility, like Eribon’s influential Retour
à Reims, or Cynthia Cruz’s The Melancholia of Class (2021), in which she notesthat she “had no language or concepts with which to work through this experience” (12), because “the concept of social class and the working class have been
removed from discourse” (80). The working class, however, has not: “Existing
between worlds […], the working class haunts. Though (symbolically) dead, wecannot be put to rest because we are still alive” (ibid.). Cruz is one among manytrying to give a voice—in this case taking recourse to the semantics of spectrality,and breaking up generic boundaries between personal testimony, critical theory
and cultural analysis—to a new (and lived) class reality. Related to these discussions, the moral undertones of the topological metaphor of upward and downward mobility have urged scholars like Chantal Jaquet to develop a different,
more neutral concept: the ‘transclasse’ (Jaquet 2018). While this is an importantdevelopment, it would also be important to consider how ‘transclasse’ experiences are valued differently in various (national) contexts. The chapters collected inthis volume achieve exactly this: they show how social mobility and the concepts
used to capture it can have different cultural, symbolical and affective meanings—with the term of the ‘social climber’ having negative connotations in the
United Kingdom, for instance.

Social Diversification and the Emergence of New Class
Categories
While, on the one hand, broader socio-economic shifts conjured up spectres ofclass and rendered class boundaries blurry and less evident, on the other handthe diverse backgrounds of those in comparable precarious situations complicate class affinities and solidarity: it becomes harder to find commonalities between the interests of individual workers. However, traditional class theories,
especially in a socialist and/or Marxist tradition, have defined classes as moreor less stable and homogenous entities defined by objective political, economic
and cultural relations. In this case, the working class, much like its antagonist,
the bourgeoisie, is defined by a relation of production, its connection to capital,
and its potential for resistance and revolution (with a classless society as finalaim). As Magnus Nilsson reminds us in his contribution to this volume, Marx
explains in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) that this power
to resist depends on a passage from a ‘class in itself ’ to a self-conscious ‘class foritself,’ capable of collective action. In a similar, classical Marxist vein, Lenin was
profoundly suspicious of the assumption that the oppression of the working class16Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

would spontaneously lead to revolution, and he famously advocated the necessity to fashion a theoretically informed class consciousness that would go beyond
concrete and immediate demands in What is to Be Done? ([1902] 1987).
While it may seem that it is due to contemporary evolutions that the imageof a homogeneous working class becomes shattered, the latter has in fact always
been a myth, concealing a myriad of concrete personal biographies and desiresthat do not necessarily overlap with socialist theorems. In particular, Jacques
Rancière’s work on the archive of nineteenth-century worker-poets in the Proletarian Nights has fundamentally altered the cliché view on workers’ identity andtheir hopes and dreams for the future. As Donald Reid argues, Rancière’s project
has to be understood against the backdrop of overly reductionist theories of classheld by Marxist scholars in the 1960s and 1970s (see introduction to Rancière2012). Indeed, the reception of Marx often downplays the fact that, until the very
end of his life, he acknowledged the heterogeneity of classes. As Joseph Entin
recently reminded us, even in the last sections before the third volume of Capitalabruptly breaks off, Marx distinguishes between “three major classes—laborers,
capitalists and property owners—defined by each group’s respective source ofincome: wages, profit or rent” (2021, 32). Marx, however, in the same breath
also acknowledges that these classes can be endlessly divided further based on
their diverging “Interessen und Stellungen” [interests and positions], resulting in“unendliche Zersplitterung” [endless fragmentation] (1983, 892–893). Descriptions like these anticipate the sensitivity to fragmentation and diversification incontemporary debates, in which the plurality of the working class, i.e. its “nonidentity” with its unitary ‘ideal type,’ is, as a sidenote, rediscovered in past phases
in class history, too (see, among others, Eiden-Offe 2017, 23–27).
The more recent attempts to develop a language to come to terms with current complexities of class identity, too, evoke and break up traditional ways ofimagining class. For example, Toni Negri and Michael Hardt have introduced
the figure of the multitude, defined from the outset not only as global capitalism’s other, but also in opposition to other collective subjects like the people,
the masses and the working class. In contrast to these collectives characterisedby a high degree of unity and homogeneity, the multitude “is composed of innumerable internal differences that can never be reduced to a unity or a single
identity,” as an open, inclusive and potentially “global class” that subsumes not
only waged industrial workers, but also those tasked with “the production ofcommunications, relationships, and forms of life” (2004, xiv–xv). Opening up
to plurality, which implies drawing critical attention towards “race, ethnicity, geography, gender, sexuality, and other factors,” multitude “is a class concept,” as itexists only as “a collectivity” of singularities insofar they “struggle[] in common”(ibid., 104). In a similar vein, but relying on a more fleeting and flexible concep-

Re-Imagining Cl ass17

tion of subjectivation, Judith Butler has highlighted the performative potentialof public assembly as it “embodies the insight that [precarization] is both sharedand unjust and […] enacts a provisional and plural form of coexistence that constitutes a distinct ethical and social alternative to ‘responsabilization’” (2015, 14).
Furthermore, Guy Standing has introduced the precariat as a concept to denote a “fragmented global class structure,” i.e. an emerging “dangerous class,”
marked by a shared sense of insecurity and a weak connection with capital or thestate (2011, 13). He explicitly contrasts it with the working class, as the precariat“has none of the social contract relationships of the proletariat, whereby labour
securities were provided in exchange for subordination and contingent loyalty”(ibid., 14). As a figure of the dispossessed and disenfranchised, the precariat lacks
an occupational identity; its members are trapped “in career-less jobs, without
traditions of social memory, a feeling they belong to an occupational community
steeped in stable practices, codes of ethics and norms of behaviour, reciprocity
and fraternity” (ibid., 20). These characterisations have urged critics like Bryan
Palmer, writing from a traditionally socialist point of view, to reject Standing’s
precariat as a mere “ideology,” which presumably neglects the fact that social
vulnerability “has always been the fundamental feature of class formation rather
than the material basis of a new, contemporary class” (2014, 44–45). Similar criticisms have emerged with respect to the geographical assumptions that underlie
the notion of the precariat: while Standing suggests the global projection of the
precariat, others have highlighted the risks of applying an overly homogenising
approach to specific local conditions, which are often characterised by unequal
power relations and different needs and forms of social struggle (Hammer and
Ness 2023, 6). Aside from the links with actual protest movements like EuroMayDay, Precarias a la deriva and Occupy—at times suggested by Negri, Hardt
and Standing—this conceptual work has sparked a broader debate on the actuality and use of class categories, both as tools for sociological analysis and for protest, able to grasp, imagine or inspire actual outbursts of social protest of people
with the most diverse backgrounds. These discussions have shifted attention to
the singular, fragmented and intersectional dimensions of individual and social
identities.

Intersectional Perspectives: Class vs. Identity?
In parallel to these political, socio-economic and cultural trends, in the mid1990s the interdisciplinary field of working-class studies emerged, “out of aconcern with those negatively impacted by these changes” (Fazio et al. 2021, 2)
and with the central aim “to conceptualize the social differences, tensions, and18Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

contradictions that have in fact always been constitutive of working-class collectivity” (Entin 2021, 32). Working-class studies put considerable emphasis onplurality, relationality and change. In this context, a crucial question becomes
how class is inflected by race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender and sexuality,
and approaches to class have been accordingly reformulated through the prismof intersectionality. As a consequence, the focus has shifted away from class as
an objective relation to “class as an identity—shaped by economics and exploitation, to be sure, but most urgently stood as a form of belonging” (Entin 2021, 33).
In the words of Ben Clarke, “working-class studies is […] necessarily a form of‘intersectional analysis,’ its diversity founded, in the last instance, on that of theworking class itself ” (2021, 363). As Patricia Hill Collins explains, intersectionality refers to a “constellation of ideas and practices that maintain that gender,
race, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, ability, and similar phenomena constitute amutually constructing constellation of power relationships” (2020, 122). She alsoemphasises that it refers to a knowledge project which implies both inquiry andpractice, and that the entrance of the term into academic discourse, most frequently attributed to Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), was preceded by a long andvibrant history of intersectional movements and practices, in which Black feminism in particular played a pivotal role. This prism, as she has argued elsewhere,is fundamental in that it allows previously established knowledge to be interrogated, for instance with regard to the predominance of white, male experiencesin studies of work (Hill Collins 2019, 36).
Among the manifold approaches that have put intersectionality on the research agenda, even if they were not (explicitly) labelled as such at the time they
emerged, an important section of them have undertaken a considerable effort torevise traditional Marxist categories. The project of rethinking Marxism fromthe viewpoint of the intrinsic connectedness of class, gender and race relies on
a tradition of feminist—and particularly Black feminist—thought that spans thewhole twentieth century (see Lewis 2022, 93–186 for an overview). From theperspective of gender, feminist scholars such as Silvia Federici and Angela Davis,
to name just two well-known examples, have pointed not only to the problem
of workplace discrimination and unequal remuneration, but also to the issue of
reproductive labour. Federici’s criticism of Marx’s work denounces the lack ofattention in his writings to the fundamental role of domestic work in the reproduction of the very conditions of possibility for capitalism. As one of the key proponents of the Wages for Housework movement, Federici ([1975] 2020, 40–44)
contended that women performing housework are in fact invisible—and hence,
unwaged—workers whose labour is being naturalised and obscured so as not
to reveal the essential part they play in the functioning of capitalist economies.
Correcting the idea that this situation affects all women equally, Davis pointed

Re-Imagining Cl ass19

out that Black women historically have had to endure the “double burden of wage
labor and housework” ([1981] 1983, 192) because of slavery and its legacies—aburden shared by working-class white women, albeit not to the same extent, andin markedly different ways. She likewise problematised the assumption that capitalism was interested in maintaining the reproductive capacities of (all) womenfor the production of the labour force, pointing out how the reproductive rights
of Black women have been consistently curtailed (cf. ibid., 178–185).
At the same time, the Eurocentric, Western and race-blind assumptions of
Marxism became increasingly questioned by scholars working within in the Black
Radical tradition (see Robinson [1983] 2000), while the intrinsic connection between capitalism and coloniality—as a constellation of “long-standing patternsof power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits ofcolonial administrations” (Maldonado-Torres 2007, 243)—became a major preoccupation in post- and decolonial theory, accounting, for example, for the way
in which colonial assumptions underpin the lack of valorisation—and hence, theunequal remuneration—of the indigenous and black workforce (Quijano [2000]
2020, 869). These inequalities are further exacerbated by migration, as migrants
often face precarious and insecure conditions because of their incomplete accessto full citizenship rights (see Ramírez et al. 2021). More recently, scholars suchas Holly Lewis have worked to reconcile Marxist thought with the demands andstruggles of queer people by problematising the heteronormativity that underlies
capitalism’s control of women’s sexuality (2022, 183–186). Needless to say, theseare only a few examples of the vast bibliography of critical thinking on whichintersectionality relies, which should be complemented by approaches to otherfactors of discrimination such as ethnicity, ability and age, and should, ideally, be
extended beyond the human as well, as the contributions to this volume by Tim
Christiaens and by Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan suggest.
A recurring topic in the bibliography on intersectional approaches to working-class studies is the encounter between identity politics and class-based demands and analyses. Especially in the US, approaches to class became entangledwith questions of identity politics. These approaches have been criticised for
conflating class as an objective social relation and as an individual way of life,
i.e. an identity. In doing so, they are rooted in the broader post-structuralist suspicion against totalising narratives and essentialising categories. In opposition
to these strands of research, critics like Tove Soiland (2012) have rejected thetendency to consider class as an identity category, refocusing its meaning to what
it initially was: a heuristic tool to expose, analyse and problematise an objective,
primarily economic relation that engenders mechanisms of hierarchisation andexploitation. Subsequently, she points out—correctly—that merely deconstruct-20Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

ing a category like class will not alter the power structures it helps to conceive of.
She pleads for reinstating the original meaning and purpose of class as a purely
objective, materialist category.
Other scholars have warned against the neglect of class-based power inequities that can result from the predominant focus on (racial) identity politics (seeWilson [1987] 2012), as well as against the increasingly frequent cases in whichmovements of resistance based on identitarian demands have been hijacked byan economic and political elite (Táíwò 2022).1 This uneasy combination of classand identity on a theoretical level also resonates strongly with the perception of
their antagonism in the political sphere. Among other things, this phenomenon
explains why voters in disadvantaged positions nevertheless endorse candidates
and policies that are detrimental to their well-being as they perceive elitist political correctness and ‘woke’ movements as a more imminent threat—see therise of populism in all Western societies (cf. Nachtwey 2018, 213–231 on theGerman situation), but especially the anger and hopelessness experienced by the
precarised white working class in the US (Poblete 2021, 216–218).
This tension is the result of recent historical re-evaluations of identity concepts
as such. For example, Marie Moran has shown that the emergence and salienceof notions (and subsequent deconstructions) of both personal and social identity as a device of classification and of mobilisation is a fairly new phenomenon,“only emerg[ing] with the explosion of consumption in the late twentieth century” (2016, 4). A cultural materialist approach reveals that “what we now thinkof as different social and political ‘identities’ only came to be framed as suchwith the emergence of exclusive group-based politics, new social movements and‘multiculturalism’ in the 1960s and 1970s” (ibid.). This is evident in an increasing
occurrence of the term in political and cultural discourses, as well as a broadening range of its possible meanings. According to Moran, identity is a concept that“carries and encapsulates a new way of thinking about and engaging with a rangeof social, political and human concerns,” which also includes activist struggles of/against collective identities (ibid., 26). By historicising the very idea of identity, it
becomes possible to move beyond the aforementioned rift between a “social left”
that maintains that “identity politics conceal the material bases of oppression andfracture any coherent, class-based movement” and a “cultural left” defending theuse of identity categories and the attempts to mobilise along the (intertwined)
axes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity or race (ibid., 7). The task, instead, isto examine how exactly this device [the concept of identity] has been operationalised, culturally, politically and commercially, in a capitalist context. Instead ofasserting the priority of economic over cultural concerns, or of class over identity concerns, or vice versa, this approach allows us to explore and evaluate theirRe-Imagining Cl ass21
inter-relation—by examining how the idea of identity is used and acted upon to
great political and commercial effect within capitalist societies, in ways which do
not always or automatically reinforce a capitalist logic, but which may also challenge it. (ibid.)

This volume follows the thesis that personal and social identity concepts should
not be neglected but rather studied in relation to the material and cultural contexts in which they are embedded. Objective economic relations are after all always experienced by individuals, and class is more than just a structural, economic category (Felski 2021, 98–99). In Pierre Bourdieu’s influential theory ofclass (La distinction, 1979), this aspect already plays a fundamental role, insofar
as it is intrinsic to his notions of social reproduction and habitus: he shows howa system of inequality, exploitation and class injury reproduces itself througheveryday modes of being, i.e. engrained patterns of behaviour and thought. Social differences manifest themselves symbolically, as taste differences. Moreover, Bourdieu’s concepts of class and habitus point to realms of social experience
outside of the workplace, which sustain and enforce class differences, like thedomestic sphere, school, the judiciary and penal system. These institutions of socialisation normalise power structures through habituation and discipline, keeping class subjects in place—an exertion of power Bourdieu also called “symbolic
violence” (Bourdieu 1998).
Intersectional approaches to class and identity are also strongly dependent on
the geopolitical factors that condition social relations. While class concepts that
acknowledge the heterogenous and fragmentary nature of the working class, likethe ‘multitude’ or ‘precariat,’ have an international—even aspirationally global—
scope, contemporary class imaginations remind us of the many national, local
and individual situations that affect these identities and are in their turn mediated and reconfigured through culture. As mentioned earlier, the neoliberal turnhas taken on various guises in different locations, and so has its impact on workand class experiences. The contributions in this volume focus on societies thatare commonly considered part of what has been called the “Global North.” Thereis, however, a lot to learn from the so-called “Global South” when taking into account the evolution towards ever more precarious labour conditions in Western
societies and from the aesthetic projects that address heavily entrenched forms ofwork-related vulnerability and precarity—for instance, Chilean author Diamela
Eltit’s recent novels on sex workers (Fuerzas especiales, 2013) and street vendors(Sumar, 2018), Mexican writer Vivian Abenshushan’s experimental multimedia(Permanente obra negra, 2019) and essayistic work (Escritos para desocupados,2013) on art as a form of precarious employment, or the immense literary production in Argentina that set out to diagnose the causes and consequences of the22Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

economic crisis and accompanying social upheaval of 2001. What is more, decolonial scholars have identified the antagonism between class and identity politics as a central feature of the Eurocentric perspective, and have highlighted theimportance not only of deconstructing these assumptions, but also of taking socalled “epistemologies of the South” seriously (de Sousa Santos 2016). These offerdifferent and potentially more productive models to approach these phenomena
because, among other factors, of the way in which some of them are inherently
non-binary (cf. Rivera Cusicanqui 2012). A proper engagement with such epistemologies falls largely outside of the scope of this book (with the sole exception ofVerbesselt and Rapongan’s chapter, which adopts a perspective informed by Tao
critical thought in Taiwan). However, we hope that the intersectional perspective
on class that we adopt here can be a first step in addressing some of the concernsthat have arisen regarding the exclusions generated by Western-based discourses
of knowledge.
In the Global North as well, however, research that wants to do justice to thecomplexities of the local has to compare key examples taken from ‘major’ economies (the US, UK, France, Germany) with class imaginaries that have not received much international attention by scholars (Sweden, Spain, Taiwan). Thisgoal, pursued in this volume, can help us obtain a differentiated understandingof how complex class identities are articulated in contemporary culture. By reading contemporary class stories against the backdrop of class imaginaries and vocabularies from the past and the present, it is possible to shed more light on the
different kinds of working-class culture that exist in different contexts and arereconfigured and actualised in concrete texts and images.

Class Imaginaries in Contemporary Culture
What the aforementioned debates show is that the questions of what constitutes
a class and how the individual subject relates to class as an objective reality andsubjective identity are constantly being renegotiated, under the pressure of shifting political, social, economic and cultural contexts. These reconceptualisationsof class are presented with awareness of its inner tensions and differences, its dynamics and historical variability, its intersections with other structures of powerand exploitation—this in opposition to static, universal and essentialist definitions of the working class. Cultural representations of class reflect and actively
take part in this myriad of positions, as becomes clear from the vast, rhizomatically expanding archive of narrative and visual stories dealing with the most heterogenous intimate and social, personal and collective class experiences (even if
they are not always explicitly framed in terms of class).

Re-Imagining Cl ass23

This volume wants to zoom in on specific aspects of this vast archive of stories,
by looking at the strategies to negotiate and renegotiate, to mediate and remediate complex, intersectional identities in various narrative genres. Its premises
are that this archive offers a highly diverse set of imaginaries and stories of class.
Whereas there is a prolific body of scholarship dealing with working-class culture and representations of class, poverty and precarity (see, for example, Korte
and Regard 2014, Böhm and Kovacshazy 2015, Lennon and Nilsson 2017–2020,
Hogg and Simonsen 2021, Rys and Philipsen 2021, Fazio et al. 2021), contemporary cultural production urges us to revise some common premises and prejudices about class identities and imagine new ones (Fazio et al. 2021). The neoliberal condition, the new trajectories for up- and downward social mobility andthe scattered nature of what could today be described as a working class—allrecurrent themes in present-day culture—urge us to develop more differentiatedanalytic frames. Exactly because cultural narratives of and about class articulate
this diversity, these have a crucial role to play in this process. The contributions
to this volume show that the frames evoked by the diversifying and critical gestures of these stories complement and refine theoretical insights.
Furthermore, cultural representations of identity are related to the strife towards recognition of class experiences and injuries. It is no coincidence that bothin sociology and in literary and visual text genres the role of storytelling occupies
a central place, as narrative strategies are needed which construct and give access to class experiences. Informed by Axel Honneth’s analysis of social struggles
in terms of recognition, Rita Felski has argued that as soon as lived experiencesof class are made accessible in the public realm, they acquire a different status,
thereby shedding their anonymous and everyday character. As public goods
and objects of representation, they are to various degrees legitimised as being“worthy of wider attention—as counting” (2021, 104). In contrast to sociological accounts of class and precarity, culture does more than registering that classexists, by showing “how it permeates one’s being in the world, affects one’s body,and enters into one’s soul” (ibid., 103). In that respect, culture does “not simply
portray struggles over recognition; they also enact them,” as “a key mechanism ofrecognition” (ibid., 102). Culture thus influences the place and weight of layeredclass identities within the public debate.
These identities are also strongly dependent on the study of the narrative andvisual techniques with which writers and artists construct and negotiate classexperiences. As Jacques Rancière has it, aesthetic practices are fundamental forprocesses of subjectivation, by which traditional and common-sense identities
are rearticulated, affirmed or called into question (1992, 58–64). It is this subjectivating power, indeed, that harbours a great deal of the performative potentialof these stories for re-imagining class identity, for redistributing the sensible. It

24Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

should be noted, as well, that these subjectivation processes can best be thoughtof as mobilised both by discourse and non-discursive regimes, in which affectplays a major role as a fundamentally transindividual force—see, for instance,
Maurizio Lazzarato’s (2014, 16) criticism of what he considers Rancière’s excessive reliance on discursive practices. Already before Rancière, Raymond Williams argued that, because “no mode of production, and therefore no dominantsociety or order of society, and therefore no dominant culture, in reality exhausts
the full range of human practice, human energy, human intention,” culture always pushes the boundaries of what is perceived as normal further, teasing out“emergent,” i.e. “alternative[,] perception[s] of others,” “new meanings and values, new practices, new significances and experiences” (1980, 41–43).
Against this background, the study of artistic imaginaries of class helps toelucidate the importance of narrativity for sociological analyses more generally;
it can also enrich existing models, by foregrounding the personal, plural andexperiential. Class as subjective experience is, for example, prompted in projects
that collect individual voices and personal stories of those in precarious positions, thereby not only foregrounding the diversity within the working force, butalso emphasising that class is a lived experience. Acknowledging the voices fromthe inside is an important method of working-class studies, which contributes toa better understanding of “the tension between specificity and generalization”
that underpins class theory. Stories help to “highlight gaps and oversimplifications” in our conceptualisations of class, and often this urges us to confront issues of social reproduction, or of class as experienced in its intersections with
race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality (Linkon 2021, 23). Individual stories are
Julia Friedrichs’ (2021) and Nicole Mayer-Ahuja and Oliver Nachtwey’s (2021)
method to elucidate how insecurity disproportionately affects the non-white andnon-male groups—a fact that had to a large extent remained invisible. Equally marginalised were the class experiences of social climbers, which statisticalmodels neglect as mere anomalies. Chantal Jaquet (2018) shifted focus towards
exactly these biographies as part of a project to revise Bourdieu’s theory of social
reproduction. Bourdieu leaves little room to acknowledge or explain what Jaquetlabels “transclasse,” even though these exceptional biographies can help to shed
new light on class society: their existence itself reveals that class boundaries arestill in place. Jaquet convincingly shows that, in particular, various strands of autobiographical narration, ranging from memoirs and testimonies to autofiction,
have become a central medium to interlink self-exploration and broader sociological analysis, as it presents individual lives as embedded in class contexts.
Autosociobiographical texts—texts that combine the narration of individual experiences with sociological analysis—like Annie Ernaux’s La Place (1983) and
La Honte (1987) or Eribon’s Retour à Reims (2009) offer a theoretically informed

Re-Imagining Cl ass25

analysis of a social reality exemplified in the narrating self ’s singular experience
as a transclass, moving between classes, unable to fully break with their origin
nor to integrate in the class of arrival.
The focus of these narratives lies on individual subjects growing up in a working-class environment from which they gradually become estranged; they also
articulate complex identities, caught between classes and on the intersections
with gender, sexuality and ethnicity. While Bourdieu urges us to confront how
individuals are affected by their surroundings and social networks, more recent
conceptualisations of class show that they are never fully determined by them.
Accordingly, the focus on the individual exposes the role of affective relations
that underpin the dynamic processes of class identification and de-identification,of social reproduction and non-reproduction. Teachers or family members who
were able to cross class boundaries and with whom individuals have a positive
relation can set an example and inspire them to make a jump themselves. Social
non-reproduction is always a transindividual phenomenon, which can only beunderstood by taking into account a variety of changing social, economic andaffective variants that inform singular biographies. In short, Jaquet offers a way
out of the controversies as to whether the objective and collective or the subjective and personal should be foregrounded, and she shows that the complexity ofclass as relation and experience is paradigmatically grasped in concrete stories offactual or fictional selves, i.e. in cultural artefacts.
The cultural recognition of layered class identities in concrete stories and narratives has to be studied with attention to the variety in the corpus under consideration that manifests itself on multiple levels, culturally, historically and geographically. In order to do justice to this heterogeneity, we deliberately define
working-class imaginaries in a broad sense, focusing not only on artefacts andvoices by members of the working class themselves, but also by those depicting social realities and experiences they have not necessarily lived through themselves.
This entails the risk Cynthia Cruz describes in The Melancholia of Class, where
she signals that “there are very few contemporary poets or fiction writers from theAmerican working class, and these few who are, tend either to incorporate culturally shared stereotypes and caricatures about the working class in their writing, orthey abandon their working-class background entirely” (2021, 48). Cruz prompts
us to reflect on the ethics of storytelling. This has to do not only with issues ofrepresentation and narratability, but also with the implicit power relations thatnecessarily define the position from which a writer or an artist speaks: who is in alegitimate position to speak about precarious workers from various backgrounds
in the first place? Can someone who has not lived through the hardships of a life
in precarity understand and talk about that? Cruz’s position is clear: “Artists who
attempt to depict the lives of the working class who are not from the working class26Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

must necessarily write from a detached point of view. As a result, such projects
become anthropological: the writer and reader stand outside the experience being
depicted, creating yet one more layer of marginalization” (ibid., 183). We believe,
however, that excluding those ‘external’ class imaginaries would limit our capacity to reconstruct the myriad, hybrid and often fragmented cultural lives of classin contemporary culture—we would run the risk of reifying them and rendering
them incommunicable to anyone who does not find herself in the exact sameintersectional position in the field of power—as well as the parallel processes ofrecognition and misrecognition, of stereotyping and diversification.
Three fundamental questions follow from the call for an aesthetics of intersectional working-class identities. First, who or what is being recognised as being
what? When do representations become stereotypical and/or voyeuristic, further
enforcing cultural dynamics of othering? What realities and experiences are explicitly connected with concepts of class, or how do cultural artefacts indirectly
conjure up imaginations of class? What ideological, political, activist meanings
are projected onto figures of class? If the texts, images and filmic narratives fromthe archive of and about working-class culture articulate complex, intersectional
identities, it should be analysed how these identities are constructed. In particular, the narrative works here studied explore new alliances and dividing lines
both within the traditional working class and at its boundaries, which connect
in different ways with questions of race, gender and sexual orientation. Second,through what genre- and medium-specific means is the process of recognisingintersectional class identities realised? While present-day class imaginations respond to the neoliberal juncture in socio-economic history, it is also true thatthey often actualise existing narrative and visual strategies to narrate class identity and agency, like the Bildungsroman or certain types of social and criticalrealism. These lineages of writing and rewriting conceptual and aesthetic traditions from the past can best be reconstructed by moving back from specific cases
to explore the dialogue with their antecedents. It is likewise important to notethat many of the examples elude traditional genre categories and navigate on thescale of documentary and fictional narration. This hybridity is exemplified in the
many examples of autobiographical and autofictional novels in which narrators
seek a new voice to articulate their identities, like Didier Eribon, Édouard Louisand Deniz Ohde. Even though the textual, visual and performative narratives
rely on different aesthetic strategies, it will be important to question how diver­ging stories of class resonate: what are the recurring patterns that become visible
across the variety of individual experiences and artistic practices? Third, how doclass texts and images position themselves socially, and what are the strategies
by which they aim to affect readers, viewers and audiences? This points in the
direction of a cultural reception that is itself affected by class boundaries, which

Re-Imagining Cl ass27

impact the distribution and accessibility of texts and images. In their processes
of affective world-making, textual and visual artefacts mobilise a wide range ofstructures of feeling which supersede the level of the individual mind and conscious interpretation (Breger 2020).2 Several examples of contemporary literature
related to the working class seek to involve their audience by interpellating them
directly, or to make them participants of their performative gestures. Against thisbackground, questions of aesthetics and ethics appear deeply entangled.

The Contents of this Book
This volume is the outcome of a symposium on Re-Imagining Class, which took
place in May 2022 in Leuven and was organised by the IdeaLab Figures and Narratives of Precarity (a forum for ground-breaking and interdisciplinary researchof early-career scholars, funded by KU Leuven, Belgium). The volume includes
contributions by international researchers and widely recognised experts, active
in a broad range of geographical and linguistic fields. The innovative aspect of
this volume lies in its transnational, multimedial and interdisciplinary approach
to examine the proliferating archive of class imaginaries. While most studies ofworking-class culture tend to zoom in on a national context, this volume’s starting point is the diversification as well as the interaction and even transfer of texts
and images within and across national boundaries or traditions of countries thatare part of the Global North. One of its goals lies in its comparative approach,which traces how (rearticulations of) working-class identities are constructedacross various media that have to be studied as complementary in order to geta fuller and more nuanced grasp of the diversity of the archive of working-classculture, its many manifestations and functions. Hence this volume does notclaim exhaustivity, though it wants to offer models to analyse concrete artefacts.
Lastly, the scope of the volume is interdisciplinary in order to map out the way inwhich art and storytelling can contribute to a better understanding of contemporary society. Together, the chapters elicit a dialogue between literary and cultural
studies, artistic research, sociology and political theory, including perspectives
on the function of testimonial narratives in qualitative sociological research.
The contributions are structured into five parts that set out possible trajectories through the maze of contemporary class imaginations. The first part, “Rediscovering Class: Continuities and Ruptures,” is comprised of two chapters that
explore the way in which contemporary literature addresses the (recent) historical evolution of class imaginaries in different national contexts. They identify how
these works engage with more traditional working-class figures, thereby examining both the factors of continuity and the breaking points which inform contem-

28Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

porary imaginings of class. Fundamental to these analyses are the questions as towhich elements are selected from the traditional archive of working-class narratives, and which conditions govern the fluctuations in the visibility of class in a
wider social and literary context. In both chapters, the question of precarity andthe concept of the precariat play a fundamental role as heuristic devices to elucidate contemporary tendencies and to examine their (supposed) newness. What ismore, both insist on the necessity of adequately accounting for geographical andhistorical specificity, as traditions and literary evolutions vary greatly between
national contexts. This argument is made explicit by Magnus Nilsson’s opening
chapter “Writing (for) the Precariat: Mats Teglund’s Cykelbudet (2021) and Pelle
Sunvisson’s Svenska Palmen (2021)” (1.1), which zooms in on the way in which
contemporary Swedish novels engage with a local tradition of working-class literature which, in contrast to other national contexts, configures class as depending
more on political and ideological parameters than on cultural factors. His readings of Pelle Sunvisson’s Svenska palmen (2021) and Anders Teglund’s Cykelbudet(2021) rely on Marx’s distinction between an economically defined ‘class in itself ’and a ‘class for itself ’ that implies a deeper level of class consciousness in order toaddress these works’ similarities—and, to a lesser degree, their differences—with
working-class novels published in the first half of the twentieth century.
In “Making Visible the Invisible: Spanish Post-Crisis Fiction” (1.2), ChristianClaesson identifies post-dictatorial optimism after the return to democracy inSpain in the 1970s as an important factor in the obscuring of precarious experiences and of class-related concerns both in the public sphere and in literary
discourse, and deems the particularly harsh way in which the financial crisis of
2008–2009 hit the Spanish economy at least partly responsible for their resurgence. He proposes the category of ‘post-crisis literature’ to amend the muchinvoked label of the ‘novela de la crisis’ in a bid to signal how tendencies in literature evolve beyond the temporally limited framework imposed by the idea of‘crisis.’ Drawing on the similarities and contrasts between Isaac Rosa’s La mano
invisible (2011) and Cristina Morales’s Lectura fácil (2018), Claesson registers
an increasing politicisation of post-crisis literature in the sense that it points to
new possibilities for action on the basis of a recognition of (unequally) sharedconditions of precarity.
The second part, “Personalising Class: Individuals and Collectives,” deals
with the tensions between personal, at times also deeply intimate, experiences
and the idea of shared socio-economic relations and interests that underpin collective class identities in the first place. As outlined above, class identities havebecome more fragmented because of socio-economic shifts and the growing
awareness of their intersectional layering. This tension not only manifests itself
in contemporary literature, but also plays a fundamental role in the narrative

Re-Imagining Cl ass29

biographical interviews that form the basis of qualitative sociological research
addressing the embedment of individuals in larger networks.
The chapters in this part zoom in on the tension between individual and classexperience, and they explore how new forms of solidarity that are nonethelessrespectful of individual differences can be imagined. In his contribution on “ThePoetics of Personal Authenticity: Diversity, Intersectionality and the Working
Class in Contemporary German Literature” (2.1), Christoph Schaub focuseson the new attention towards intersectional class identities in contemporary
German literature, which finds its most poignant expression in genres of selfexploration, like autobiography and autofiction. Through the analysis of Deniz
Ohde’s autofictional novel Streulicht (2020) and the anthology of stories Klasse
und Kampf (2021; ed. Maria Barankow and Christian Baron), Schaub shows howheterogeneity is vindicated by these authors through the narration of individual
experiences, and how these are mobilised against homogenising views of theworking class. In this context, ideas of personal authenticity appear key to understanding the diversifying strategies to which these authors turn in their works.
In his chapter “Narrating the Precariat: Social Wounds in Terézia Mora’s andWilhelm Genazino’s Novels” (2.2), Olaf Berwald addresses how the narration ofindividual experiences and their confrontation with the perspective of external
observers shed light on the consequences of intersectionally distributed precarity
and their dehumanising dimension in the work of these two authors. He focuseson Mora’s novel Das Ungeheuer (2013) and her notebooks published as Fleckenverlauf (2021), and on Genazino’s novels Die Kassiererinnen (1998), Außer uns
spricht niemand über uns (2016), and Kein Geld, keine Uhr, keine Mütze (2018),
as well as his posthumously published lectures, Die Angst vor der Penetranz desWirklichen (2020).
Crossing the disciplinary divide between literary studies and sociology, thechapter “‘Know Where to Fish’: Class and Gender Precarity and Project-based
Networks in Creative and Cultural Industries” (2.3) underlines the importanceof individual storytelling as a heuristic tool for the uncovering of broader tendencies in the rearticulation of class experiences in relation to race and gender. The authors of the chapter, Valeria Pulignano, Deborah Dean, Markieta
Domecka and Lander Vermeerbergen, analyse the precarisation of work in
the creative sector by mapping out the networks on which workers depend for
project opportunities. Based on narrative biographical interviews with projectworkers, and semi-structured interviews with experts, in the film, TV and dance
sectors across four European countries, their findings point to commodificationin project work as one of the generative forces leading to precarious class-based
outcomes, and identify the unequal positioning within and incomplete access to
networks of sociability and recognition as detrimental to upward mobility.

30Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

In the third part, “Narrating Class: Voice and Belonging,” the contributors
seek to flesh out the literary strategies with which writers construct a narrative
voice able to adequately recognise layered class identities and affective structuresof belonging. While the first chapter analyses the implications of the hybridity of
the narratorial voice, the subsequent two chapters zoom in on the constructionof the figure of the transclass in order to address the ambiguities that surroundthe characters’ relationships to the differently positioned others that have influenced their professional trajectories. The trope of social advancement occurs inmany contemporary novels that deal with experiences and injuries of class, notin the least in a societal context that often still allegedly adheres to the idea of
meritocracy. All these chapters explore the way in which characters’ voices reflect
the hesitations, insecurities and traumatic experiences related to their (shifting)belonging to the working class. “Double(ing) Voices: Narrating Precarious Class
Status and Class Identities” (3.1) by Sula Textor explores the hybridity of thenarrative voice as a complement to—and, to an extent, a problematisation of—
the increasing prominence of autosociobiographical narratives. In her analysis
of Canadian author Megan Gail Coles’ novel Small Game Hunting at the Local
Coward Gun Club (2019), Textor shows how precarious class consciousness does
not emerge in this text as an individual experience presented through the perspective of a classical homodiegetic or omniscient narrator. Rather, the multiperspectivism of the narrative voice emphasises its transindividual dimension as thechapter explores the way in which voices and discourses become blurred to thepoint that it becomes difficult to attribute them to singular characters. Thereby it
points to the fundamental tension between lines of division and the very fluidityof identity concepts.
In “Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving: Gender and Genealogy inContemporary German Narratives of the Social Climber (Christian Baron, Bov
Bjerg, Deniz Ohde, Anke Stelling)” (3.2), Irene Husser advocates for a sustained
engagement with narrative techniques and genres in order to avoid reducing literary analysis to the identification of sociological categories within texts dealing
with precarious class experiences. Tracing narratives of the social climber backto the genre of the Bildungsroman, Husser unpacks the gender norms that interact with ideas of meritocracy in a comparative analysis of four contemporary
novels by German authors: Christian Baron’s Ein Mann seiner Klasse (2020), Bov
Bjerg’s Serpentinen (2020), Deniz Ohde’s Streulicht (2020) and Anke Stelling’s
Schäfchen im Trockenen (2018). By comparing the ways in which these texts construct discursive and affective genealogies with father and mother figures in thecontext of upward social mobility, the chapter unveils how they punctuate overly
optimistic accounts of individualised agency and explore the gendered construction of class-based models and anti-models of aspiration.

Re-Imagining Cl ass31

The last chapter of this part, Katrin Becker’s “Narrating Class and Classlessness in Contemporary British Novels of Black Women’s Social Climbing” (3.3),
similarly explores the ambiguities that surround the figure of social ascent byfocusing on narrative techniques and by situating them against the reappraisal ofclass in British sociology after its demise in the political repertoire in neoliberal
Britain. She analyses how Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021), Zadie Smith’s NW(2012), Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (2019) and Nicola William’s
Without Prejudice (1997) rely on strategies such as the narrative distribution of
information to deconstruct the individualist myths of meritocratic class imaginaries. In these texts, the tension between visibility and invisibility surrounding
helper figures and the asphyxiating consequences of the imperative of individual
advancement are mobilised to renegotiate the pitfalls of upward mobility froman intersectional and transindividual vantage point. In so doing, Becker argues,
some of them also point to the desire to re-explore the modes of collective agency still sidelined in current political debates.
The fourth part, “Performing Class: Materiality and Affect,” deals with stagings of class in contemporary theatre, performance art and cinema. The contributions are especially interested in the way in which these works invite affective
responses from their audiences. First of all, the contributions in this part analyse
the techniques that are intended to create a shared space of feeling and, ideally,
to mobilise their spectators. Here, gestures that are aimed at producing and directing affect come to the fore as recurrent tactics to foster audiences’ criticalreflection about their involvement in class structures and identities. In parallel,
all the contributions foreground issues of materiality, both with regard to thecircumstances in which artists and playwrights have to work, and as a formal
strategy, particularly in relation to the material living and working conditions
that are thematised on the level of plot and content. Furthermore, it becomesapparent that contemporary playwrights and film makers develop techniquesthat often involve reconfiguring past traditions in order to adequately address
the structures of feeling that arise in the evolution towards today’s heterogenous
precarious classes.
The first chapter in this part, Marissia Fragkou’s “Affected by Discomfort:
Class and Precarity in Twenty-First-Century Theatre” (4.1), analyses performances that aim to submerge their audiences in the experience of precariousness tied to being an artist with a working-class and otherwise intersectionallydisadvantaged background. Based on three examples of autobiographical workby UK-based performance makers Scottee (Bravado, 2017, and Class, 2019) andTravis Alabanza (Burgerz, 2018), the chapter explores the use of discomfort as anaffective strategy to induce ethically informed spectatorial engagement. Situating the performances in the context of initiatives that aim to promote diversity

32Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

in the artistic sector and problematising the gap between some of the latter’s
intentions and outcomes, Fragkou scrutinises how the active participation ofmembers of the audience becomes the ground for the construction of an ethics of care that would transcend the boundaries instated by class, race, gender,
sexuality and ability.
While Fragkou demonstrates how theatre makers experiment with new modalities of performing class, Sarah Pogoda’s contribution “The Redundancy:
Playing Production in Academic Capitalism” (4.2) shows how existing theatre
plays from the past acquire new uses and meanings in contemporary contexts.
Here, Pogoda presents her artistic research project “The Redundancy,”3 staged
in June 2019, which confronted working conditions at UK universities withGerman author Heiner Müller’s socialist production play Der Lohndrücker (TheScab, 1957). The multi-medial, site-specific performance addressed the dangers
of self-exploitation academics face when confronted with the increase in competitivity, consumer-oriented policy changes and top-down managerial practices
in higher education. By recontextualising quotes from Müller’s play and drawing on its underlying criticisms of an excessive emphasis on productivity, “TheRedundancy” staged spaces in which visitors could interactively engage with reflections on the precarisation and commodification of academic labour. Equallycentral to Pogoda’s performance is the self-reflexive attention towards its conditions of realisation and reception as its evolution was impacted by the limited
availability of overworked academic participants and gave way to, in the very
writing of her chapter, its own recuperation as academic labour.
The afterlife of material detail in visual culture is highlighted in Daniel
Brookes’ contribution “‘The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It’: A Poetics of Precarity in Bait (2019)” (4.3) about the aesthetics of the highly diverse precariat inMark Jenkin’s Bait. The experimental and fragmentary film zooms in on a Cornish fishing town in which social life has been gravely affected by the expansionof tourism and rentier capitalism. Brookes shows how the film’s proximity to thegenre of the pastoral and its visual counterposition of scenes starring villagers
and visitors sheds light on the increasing difficulty of mobilising structures offeeling for the development of class consciousness, as these depend on the existence of a community that has now been torn apart. In its exploration of the
obstacles to intra- and inter-class solidarity, the film centrally relies on tactility
both as an invitation to consider the material conditions of physical labour andas a strategy of defamiliarisation.
The final part of this volume, “Class beyond the Human: Work Experiences
and the Anthropocene,” further extends the intersectional perspective adopted
in the preceding contributions to the domain of the non-human and more-thanhuman. It emphasises the fact that the worldwide intensification of precarity

Re-Imagining Cl ass33

cannot be disentangled from the ecological damage to the planet brought about
by human beings—as the term ‘Anthropocene’ is intended to convey—and specifically by the rise, consolidation and subsequent neoliberalisation of capitalism—captured by the concept of the ‘Capitalocene,’ which emerged as a correction to the assumption that human beings share responsibility over climatechange equally (Moore 2016; Haraway 2016, 263). Re-imagining class in ecological terms implies, in the two contributions that make up this part, an effort toconceive of the ways in which certain sectors of the both human and non-humanpopulations of the planet are disproportionately affected by anthropogenic natural disasters and processes of ruination; it also entails thinking beyond anthropocentric perspectives and, in a sense, learning from the earth itself.
Tim Christiaens’s “Bare Land: Alienation as Deracination in Anna Tsing andJohn Steinbeck” (5.1) confronts Tsing’s contention that capitalism alienates living
beings from their capacity to form sustainable alliances across species and environments with a rereading of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) in aneffort to show how literature can work to imagine a new ecological class politics.
As Christiaens suggests, even if it is impossible to consider Steinbeck as a posthumanist writer avant-la-lettre, his novel nonetheless provides insights into how
capitalism simultaneously disturbs human and non-human realities by exhausting agricultural grounds, which, in turn, leads to the uprooting of rural workers.
The book thereby relies on what could be called a ‘strategic anthropocentrism’ ina bid to affectively engage its human readers. Christiaens proposes the category of‘bare land,’ by analogy with Agamben’s ‘bare life,’ to make sense of how, in the ageof intensified planetary destruction, the conditions of reproduction rather than ofproduction become essential to understand class struggle in an ecological sense.
The preoccupation with sustainable modes of living together is shared by Joeri
Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan’s chapter, “Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent
Predation” (5.2), which proposes a close reading of the latter’s story ‘The Eyes of
the Sky’ (2012). In this story, Rapongan, a Taiwan-based Tao writer draws on Tao
mythology as a way of urging humans to consider and learn from animal populations—in this case, the fish living in the ecosystem surrounding the island of Pongso no Tao. Situating their contribution within contemporary Western academic
debates on the Anthropocene and ecological precarity but decidedly prioritising
the Tao perspectives and traditions that have advanced these insights independently from —and often considerably before—the latter for their analysis, the authors
point out how interspecies storytelling can help envisaging modes of ‘prudent predation’ as opposed to the unsustainable fishing practices that respond to the needsof international markets. Thus, within the contours of literary and critical practice,
the possibility emerges to imagine an international interspecies alliance that would
reframe and correct the notion of class in the context of the Anthropocene.

34Michiel Rys and Liesbeth François

In short, the chapters in this volume explore multiple ways in which contemporary culture engages with, diversifies and in some cases radically transforms existing imaginaries of class in a deeply intersectional way. The contributors explore
how class intersects with race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and ability, and also how
different spatio-temporally anchored concepts of class co-exist. What is more, theyshow how representations of class have adapted to rapidly changing socio-economic realities that, indeed, force us to constantly re-imagine class in terms of precarity,social mobility and social fragmentation, to name just a few factors. We believe that
it is precisely this diversity that requires us to engage in an interdisciplinary dialoguethat involves, among others, artists and writers, literary scholars and cultural critics,
sociologists and political theorists. The conversation started in this book, however,is limited to the region and time in which its objects of study are situated. Most of
the contributions deal with cultural concepts that originated in societies shaped bypost-industrialisation and waning social security schemes. Nevertheless, we hopethat the last part of this volume anticipates a wider discussion of new perspectives
on class imaginaries on a planetary scale, which would include the Global Southand would require, among other things, a deeper engagement with decolonial andpost-humanist approaches. This can pave the way for further research on the conditions under which contemporary culture imagines class in a more global sense.

Notes
1.

2.

3.

Táíwó also reminds us that early advocacy groups such as the Combahee River Collective practised identity politics as a way to engage in politics more generally, in stark
contrast with some movements’ present tendency to “close ranks—especially on social
media—around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests” (2022, 18).
In her analysis of Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims, Felski warns of the risk of misrecognition, by artists (writers, filmmakers, etc.) and audiences (readers, spectators, etc.)
alike, pointing to the work of (self-)interpretation: “while others may not recognize
us as we recognize ourselves, our own sense of self also fluctuates over time and is, ofcourse, far from fallible. […] People disagree about the extent to which they want tobe acknowledged by others […] and what forms such acknowledgement should take.
[…] An attempt at acknowledgement—even if undertaken with good intent—may beperceived as graceless or condescending. And if a person chooses to disidentify withsocial categories they’re associated with—around gender, sexuality, race, or class—anacknowledgement of such categories by others may feel like an affront rather than anaffirmation” (2021, 101–102).
The project can be found on Vimeo via https://vimeo.com/336614669; there is a password to watch the trailer, “HeinerMüller”.

Re-Imagining Cl ass35

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PART 1REDISCOVERING CLASS:CONTINUITIES AND
RUPTURES1.1
Writing (for) the Precariat
Mats Teglund’s Cykelbudet (2021) and Pelle Sunvisson’s
Svenska palmen (2021)
Magnus Nilsson

In recent years, scholarly interest in the relationship between literature on the one
hand, and precarity, precariousness and the precariat on the other has increased,
and a rather substantial research literature on the topic has emerged (see e.g.
Connell 2017; Rys and Philipsen 2021b; Hogg and Simonsen 2021).1 I find two
features of this literature especially interesting. The first is the insistence that therelationship between literature and precarity is dialectical. Emily Hogg, for example, argues that “culture and the precarity concept can elucidate each other” andthat “reading notions of precarity through and with contemporary cultural forms
can generate new insights into both” (Hogg 2021, 2). The second interesting
feature is an emphasis on literature’s potential to contribute to struggles against
the injustices suffered by the precariat. A good example of this can be found in
Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen’s introduction to their edited collection about literary representations of precarious work, where they argue that literature is “coconstitutive of a shared socioeconomic imaginary, which allows one not merely
to speak about precarity,” but also to act against it (Rys and Philipsen 2021a, 3).
However, even if I very much sympathise with these research approaches andsee great potential in them, I also think that they need to be refined. Above all,it is necessary to insist much more than most scholars have hitherto done on
the historical and geographical specificity on both sides of the equation, of bothliterature and precarity, that is. This is important not least when discussing questions about the politics of precarity and literature.2
I subscribe to Marx’s view—expressed throughout his writing from the socalled Paris manuscripts and onwards, and analysed by S. S. Prawer in his remarkable book Karl Marx and World Literature—that literature, among many otherthings, is something we use to transform and create both the world and ourselves(2011, 144). This includes making sense of the societies we live in and our placesin them. For example, literary works about precarious work might contribute to42Magnus Nilsson

our understanding of capitalism and to the imaginaries on the basis of which weconstruct class identities (see Thompson 1977; Eiden-Offe 2017, 15). However,such literary meaning-making always takes place in concrete historical situations
that change over time and vary between different places; precarious working conditions are not the same everywhere, since, for example, legislation varies fromcountry to country, as does the strength of unions; literary representations of precarious work enter into dialogue with literary, political, etc. discourses that also
vary over time and between contexts; furthermore, literary meaning-making isconditioned by the specific economic, ideological, etc. conditions in the sites of literature where it emerges. To put it as simply as possible, authors who write about
precarity, precariousness and the precariat in different places and at different times
do not necessarily write about the exact same things. Furthermore, they write under different economic, political, literary, etc. conditions. Thus, questions about
the relationship between literature on the one hand, and precarity, precariousness
and the precariat on the other can never be answered generally, only specifically.
In this chapter, I will try to illustrate these claims, with the point of departurein an analysis of two contemporary Swedish works of literature, both publishedin 2021, that describe and criticise precarious employment: Anders Teglund’s (b.
1983) Cykelbudet (The Bicycle Courier) and Pelle Sunvisson’s (b. 1980) Svenska
palmen (The Swedish Palm Tree).

Tourists in the Precariat?
Both Cykelbudet and Svenska palmen are based on the authors’ first-hand experiences of precarious work. Cykelbudet is an autobiographical diary-novel about
working as a bicycle courier for the platform company Foodora, deliveringrestaurant food in Gothenburg during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Svenska
palmen draws on Sunvisson’s experiences of working under a false identity as
an Eastern European migrant worker in Stockholm, mainly doing construction
work. Sunvisson is a writer, but also works as a negotiator and a translator fora trade union. His stint in the precariat—which also included work as a berry-picker—was short and voluntary; he did not do precarious work because heneeded to, but because he wanted to do research for his writing, and, perhaps,for his union work. For Teglund, the situation is somewhat different: he is a concert pianist who also does freelance work in the cultural sector and runs a small
publishing house. He began working as a bicycle courier because the pandemic
destroyed most of his work opportunities as a cultural worker. However, he soon
came up with the idea of writing about his experiences, and thus his work canalso, at least in part, be characterised as research for writing. Teglund worked asWriting (for) the Precariat43

a bicycle courier for eighteen months before he was sacked, probably because hehad become a union organiser (see Teglund 2021b, 15).
When Cykelbudet was published, several critics pointed out that its author
only had short-term experience of precarious work. One of them, Lars Henriksson (2021b, 40), even launched an attack on Teglund, arguing that he belonged toa tradition of writers who “descend in class society to write for other members of
the educated middle class.” As well as George Orwell, he mentions Ester Blenda
Nordström (1891–1948), a Swedish reporter famous for her reportages, for example about working as a maid on a farm under a false identity (he scathingly
also compares Teglund to Günter Wallraff). In a Swedish context, the tradition
described by Henriksson constitutes the antithesis to that of working-class literature. According to Lars Furuland—who is the founding father of the academic
study of this literature in Sweden—it is constituted by its “ideological anchorage”
in the working class and the labour movement (Furuland and Svedjedal 2006,24), and, according to most critics and commentators, what guarantees this anchorage is the working-class writer’s proletarian biography. A paradigmatic example of this can be found in an article from 1903 about the working-class poet
K. J. Gabrielsson (1861–1901), written by the leader of the Social-Democratic
Party, Hjalmar Branting. He stresses the importance of Gabrielsson’s proletarian
background and celebrates him as “the first worker in our country who, withoutleaving his class […] reached a mastery of form and a scope in his productionthat grants him a place in the literature of our age” (Branting 1930, 174). Becauseof this, Branting argues, Gabrielsson could understand the workers in a way thatwas impossible for bourgeois writers, no matter how politically progressive they
were. Branting also claims that this is of fundamental political importance, stating that the Marxist slogan that the emancipation of the working classes must
be conquered by themselves is also valid in literature. The idea that the political
function of working-class literature is dependent on the writer’s working-classbackground is at the heart of Henriksson’s criticism of Teglund. Just like Branting,he stresses the importance of authors having substantial first-hand knowledge ofthe social conditions in the classes they write about. For example, he claims that“the special community that can emerge from shared experiences takes time tomaterialize and doesn’t include tourists” (Henriksson 2021b, 40). Just like Branting, he also mobilises a Marxist understanding of literary class politics, by arguing that the emancipation of gig workers must be achieved by themselves. “Evenif the need for solidarity is stronger the more insecure our jobs are,” Henriksson(2021a) writes, “emancipation can only be conquered by us ourselves.”
Teglund expresses an ambivalent attitude to this criticism. On the one hand,
he stresses that he actually does have long-time experiences of precarious work,
since, as a cultural worker, he is no stranger to freelance and gig work. On the44Magnus Nilsson

other hand, he also acknowledges that, in some respects, he is an outsider, forexample since most of the other couriers have a different skin colour and that,
unlike him, they have no voice in the public sphere (Teglund 2021c). And, when
the protagonist in Cykelbudet sums up his predicament—being a cultural worker who has to become a bicycle courier—he describes it as “falla djupare neri prekariatet”3 (Teglund 2021a, 46). Thus, Teglund claims membership in the
precariat, while also acknowledging its heterogeneity.
That Teglund feels the need to emphasise his experiences of precarious work
could be read as an indication that in Sweden the political importance of classauthenticity, of writers belonging to the collectives that they write about, is still
strong. Coming across as a tourist writing about the work of others is not desirable. But Teglund is also critical of the idea that outsiders should not write about
precarious work. He insists that it is very difficult for many within the precariat
to make their voices heard in the public sphere, implicitly pointing to the needfor assistance from outside, thereby indicating that he does not fully embrace theliterary politics traditionally associated with working-class literature in Sweden.
This, I believe, should be connected to the fact that the precariat—as Guy Standing (2011) emphasises—is not a class for itself. One of the most important sources
for the distinction between a class in itself and a class for itself is the famous passage
in Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte about peasant smallholders in nineteenth-century France. What makes them a class in itself, Marx argues(without actually using that concept), is that they share certain “economic conditions” that give rise to specific “interests” that are in conflict with those of otherclasses. At the same time, however, they do not constitute a class for itself—i.e. a
self-conscious collective that acts politically in its own interest (2002, 100–101).
Marx’s description of smallholders in mid-nineteenth-century France fits thecontemporary precariat rather well. While sharing some conditions and interests—
for example the lack of different kinds of “labour-related security” that is at theheart of Standing’s (2011, 10–11) definition—the precariat is also characterised by ahigh degree of heterogeneity in terms of education, ethnic background, legal status,
income, kind of work, etc. Furthermore, like the smallholding peasants, the precariat is often characterised by a “mode of production” that “isolates” its members“instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse,” as Marx (2002, 100) puts it. For
example, short-time and temporary employments, as well as the fact that the actual
work is seldom performed collectively, prevent the formation of worker collectives.
Thus, criticising those who write about the precariat for not being as wellintegrated into the class they depict as older working-class writers were is notvery meaningful. Since the precariat is not a class for itself, there is—quite simply—not much for the writers to be integrated in: no identity, no community, noculture, no political organisation.

Writing (for) the Precariat45

Writing Class
Since the precariat does not display the kind of class consciousness often associated with the traditional working class, those writing about it must adopt another role than that of representing an already existing class (for itself). In the caseof Teglund and Sunvisson, this role seems to be modelled on the one assigned byStanding (2014, 30) to artists experiencing precarious conditions, namely inducing others “to share a common vision.” Or, to put it in Marxist terms, to contribute to the precariat’s fulfilment of the potential that Standing attributes to it—its
transformation into a class for itself—through the promotion of class consciousness.4 Teglund and Sunvisson do this by highlighting the economic conditions
and political interests shared by those who work under precarious conditions,whilst at the same time acknowledging that as a group they are heterogenous.
They also discuss the relationship between the precariat and the working class.
In Svenska palmen, Sunvisson tells the story of Ukrainian migrant worker
Ruslan. On the surface, it seems to have great similarities with a classic Swedish
working-class novel: Ivar Lo-Johansson’s (1901–1990) Kungsgatan (1935, literally:
King Street; published in German as Kungsgatan: Roman einer Strasse in 1949). The
protagonist in that novel, Adrian, is a young man who moves to Stockholm from thecountryside with the goal of shedding his identity as the son of a farmer and instead
becoming a worker, and thus placing himself at the centre of Sweden’s transformation from an agrarian class society to a modern social-democratic welfare state (see
Nilsson 2019). Ruslan’s background is similar to Adrian’s, as he too migrates fromthe periphery to the metropolis. But his goal is simpler than Adrian’s: he just wants
to make money. However, when working as a paperless migrant, he begins learning
what it is to be a worker: it is someone who, together with others, performs labourthat is so important that employers cannot ignore their demands. Ruslan begins
dreaming of becoming one, but—unlike Adrian’s in Kungsgatan—his individual
development does not take place against any backdrop of collective progress forworkers, but in a cold capitalist world characterised by precarity. For example, his
status as a paperless migrant worker means that he is excluded both from the welfare granted to Swedish workers by the state and from the labour movement. And
unlike Adrian he never becomes class-conscious. Instead, the novel ends with him
facing deportation, and with his identity as a worker falling apart:Han hade trott sig tillhöra staden, liksom han trott sig tillhöra de arbetare som kunde
ställa krav […]. Han hade trott, men trodde inte längre.5 (Sunvisson 2021, 252)

Sunvisson not only emphasises the differences between the contemporary precariat and the traditional working class, but also points out similarities. When46Magnus Nilsson

Ruslan and a couple of other migrant workers renovate an apartment, they begin
to realise that their labour makes their employers rich:– […] Vi gör en renovering och priset går upp med en miljon. Materialet kostar
kanske tvåhundrafemtio tusen, vi får femtio var och chefen får kanske hundra.
Sammanlagt är det en halv miljon. Varifrån kommer resten? Priset har ju gått upp
med en halv miljon till.
[…] [D]en där halvmiljonen extra är det riktiga priset på vårt arbete.6 (ibid., 191)

This is a condensed version of Marx’s theory of exploitation. Thus, even if Sunvisson points to the differences between the contemporary precariat and the
traditional working class, he also highlights the fact that their fundamental relationship to capital is the same. In addition, he tries to conjure forth a possibleclass identity based on these shared economic interests. The primary exampleof this is the ending of the novel, where he describes a future transformation of
Ruslan and other migrant workers into a politically powerful collective: “I det
försvinnande ögonblicket av klarsynthet såg han den rätta tiden komma […], såg
han deras samlade växtkraft spränga stadens väggar inifrån”7 (ibid., 252).

Working-Class Literature Revisited
So far, when comparing contemporary Swedish literature about precarious workwith older working-class literature, I have mainly emphasised the differences between them. I have also argued that they are conditioned by differences between
the traditional working class and the precariat, the most important of which being that the latter is not a class for itself. But I have also shown that Sunvisson
points to similarities between the precariat and the working class. In the following, I will try to demonstrate that the differences between his and Teglund’s
works about the precariat and older working-class literature are perhaps not as
great as is generally assumed.
First, contributing to the promotion of class consciousness—as Teglund andSunvisson do—has always been an important function of working-class literature in Sweden. Gabrielsson and other working-class poets tried to win workers
for the socialist labour movement by making them share its political ideals andadopt a proletarian identity (see e.g. Mral 1985). The same is also true for many
later working-class writers, even if their works have usually been less explicitly
political. For example, as I have shown elsewhere, during the decades following
the Second World War, when many within the labour movement argued that thewelfare state had put an end to class antagonism, the working-class poet Stig Sjö-

Writing (for) the Precariat47din (1917–1993)—who is often viewed as the poet laurate of Swedish social democracy—promoted a working-class consciousness that was founded in a Marxist understanding of the antagonistic relationship between capital and labour(Nilsson 2021). Thus, even if the working class at this time was indeed a class foritself, Sjödin—as well as other working-class writers (see Nilsson 2014)—contributed both to its expansion (by trying to make more workers class-conscious)and to its development (by promoting a specific kind of class consciousness).
Secondly, even if traditional working-class writers promoted class consciousness from the inside of an already existing class, their anchorage in thisclass was seldom as strong as is usually assumed. This is true even for Lo-Johansson, generally considered to be the archetypical Swedish working-classwriter. He made his breakthrough in the 1930s with a series of novels and collections of short stories about the so-called statare: agricultural workers who
were paid in kind and constituted the lowest stratum of the Swedish working
class. The best known of these is the novel Godnatt, jord (1933, published in
English as Breaking Free in 1991). However, Lo-Johansson himself was nevera statare. His parents had been, but they managed to become tenant farmers—which represented an important step on the social and economic ladderat the time—when he was still a small child. After leaving home at a young age,
Lo-Johansson briefly tried his luck as, among other things, a peddler, a stone
mason and a postman, but soon started working as a journalist, and eventually literary writing became his main occupation. One consequence of this wasthat when writing a novel about contemporary agricultural labour in the early
1940s, Lo-Johansson had to do extensive research. However, unlike Sunvisson
and Teglund, he limited himself to theoretical research, rather than returning
to the countryside to work.
This means that Teglund and Sunvisson are actually as well anchored in the
precariat as working-class writers like Lo-Johansson were in the working class.
At least they have as much personal experience of the work done in this class.
One could also argue that some of the writers writing about the precariat sharethe economic and social situation of this group to a greater degree than older
working-class writers shared those of the working class. That Lo-Johansson became an author did indeed mean that he distanced himself radically from theproletarian world in which he grew up. For Teglund, on the other hand, being
an entrepreneur in the cultural sector does not necessarily mean that he enjoys
much better economic conditions than bicycle couriers or other gig workers.
During a pandemic, when the cultural world grids to a halt, he might even be
worse off. Thus, if one subscribes to the idea that being anchored in a class isimportant for those who want to represent it in literature, and if one argues that
contributing to the formation of this class as a class for itself is an important fea-

48Magnus Nilsson

ture of literary class politics, then Teglund and Sunvisson might appear to be in
no worse a position than were many older working-class writers.
Furthermore, it is not at all obvious that it is sharing a life world or experiences of work that constitutes the best foundation for literary class politics. In
Marx’s analysis, the distinction between a class in itself and a class for itself isoften somewhat blurred. As an ideal type, a class in itself could be viewed as anentity united solely by shared economic interests, without any social, cultural
or ideological bonds necessarily existing between its members. For example, in
Capital Marx (2000, 730) points out that a schoolmaster in a private school anda worker in a sausage factory both produce surplus value for capitalists. Thus,
economically, they stand in the same relationship to capital, and could therefore
be said to belong to the same class (in itself), even if they might have nothing incommon culturally and socially. A class for itself, in contrast, is characterised,
as an ideal type, not only by a consciousness about common interests, but also
by political organisation and action. It is this that the small-holding peasantsin France lacked, but that workers in the labour movement had. Between these
ideal types, Marx seems to place various intermediate stages. The smallholding
peasants described in Brumaire, for example, are said to share a “culture,” but still
do not yet constitute a class for itself. Earlier in the work, Marx also writes about
how on “the social conditions of existence” of a class “arises an entire superstructure of different and peculiarly formed sentiments, delusions, modes of thought
and outlooks on life” (2002, 43, emphasis added). Thus, according to Marx, aclass in itself will eventually evolve into a class for itself characterised by culturaland ideological homogeneity.
I think that it is worth challenging this idea about class consciousness being
a product of a shared culture that, in turn, is a superstructural reflection of economic interests (see e.g. Eiden-Offe 2017, 16). For example, the working classes
in different countries have displayed differences that cannot be reduced to differences regarding their economic interests. They have also changed over time—interms, for example, of political orientation—in ways that cannot be explained
only by reference to changes in the economic infrastructure. Furthermore, every
real labour movement—which can be seen as the political manifestation of aclass-conscious working class, or as the working class for itself—has encompassed
workers from different industries and regions, of different genders and religions,etc. Thus, neither their economic “base” nor their cultural “superstructure” havebeen homogenous. In Sweden, the working class has been particularly heterogenous when it comes to social and cultural characteristics. Because of the country’slate industrialisation, historian Henrik Berggren argues, Sweden’s working classnever developed the “tight socio-cultural community” that characterised it inplaces like England, Belgium or northern Germany (2010, 415). Instead, its “classWriting (for) the Precariat49

solidarity” was “born together with the organized labour movement” and thus
became political rather than cultural. “The labour-movement municipal building
and the trade union became the natural gathering point, rather than the pub andthe neighbourhood,” Berggren writes (ibid.). If this is true, then a writer’s anchorage in the life world of a class might be less important than his or her engagement in the organisations trying to mobilise it politically. And so the differences
between contemporary writers writing for the precariat and traditional workingclass writers are perhaps not so big after all, at least not in a Swedish context.
I have already mentioned that Sunvisson works for a union, and that Teglundbecame a union organiser of gig workers when he worked as a bicycle courier.
Older working-class authors also often had strong ties to the labour movement.
In Furuland’s words, Swedish working-class literature has had an “ideologicalanchorage” in the labour movement. Often, working-class writers have also
taken active part in labour-movement organisations. Lo-Johansson and Sjödin,mentioned above, are good examples. The former worked in close collaboration with the agricultural workers’ union, and the latter frequently publishedpoems and short stories in the trade union press, where he was also employed asa journalist. Both contemporary Swedish literature about precarious work andolder Swedish working-class literature can, in other words, be conceptualised as
ideologically and politically, rather than socially, defined kinds of literature.
My argument that there are similarities between traditional working-classwriters and contemporary authors writing about the precariat does not mean that
I think that the differences between them should be ignored. However, I do want
to stress that they should not be taken for granted, or be exaggerated, and thatit could be a good idea to look for similarities as well. For example, while there
are major differences between Svenska palmen and a classic working-class novel
like Lo-Johansson’s Kungsgatan, the former also displays thematic links to otherexamples of working-class or proletarian literature. Its descriptions of the exploitation of migrant workers, for example, sometimes resemble those in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle from 1906, and one critic has pointed out similarities with John
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (de Veen 2021). And there are even stronger resemblances with another working-class literature classic, namely Robert Tressell’s
The Ragged-Trousered Philantropists from 1914. The philanthropists of the title
are construction workers who, while renovating a villa, develop a labour theory ofvalue and come to the conclusion that their work can be considered charity, since
it makes their employers rich. As I have already mentioned, the workers in Svenska palmen come to a very similar conclusion when, more than a century later,
they work under conditions that differ very little from those described by Tressell.
Teglund too makes comparisons between contemporary precarious work andthe working conditions suffered by workers a hundred years ago. When the pro-

50Magnus Nilsson

tagonist in Cykelbudet discusses his work as courier with his father, they makecomparisons with older relatives, especially with the protagonist’s great-grandfather Jonas, who worked in a paper mill at the turn of the twentieth century,and his son, the protagonist’s grandfather. The protagonist puts special emphasis
on how the welfare state represented a radical change for workers, and how his
grandparents—Ernfrid and Siri—could lead much better lives than their parents:
Ernfrid och Siri får ta del av många sociala framsteg. Fem år efter Jonas död, 1938,
kommer den första lagstadgade semestern. Tolv dagars betald ledighet per år. Det
ska komma att bli bättre succesivt. Fyra decennier senare, mot slutet av Ernfrids
arbetsliv, är industrisemestern uppe i fem veckor. Han blir kvar på fabriken hela
livet och lever pensionärsliv under åttiotalet innan han dör 1990 efter en kort tids
sjukdom. En politisk retoriker skulle kunna hävda at than levde och dog parallellt
med den traditionella socialdemokratins gyllene era.8 (Teglund 2021a, 111)

The protagonist then goes on to reflect upon the emergence of the labour movement in Sweden, and what today’s precariat can learn from it. He grounds this ina discussion of Per Olov Enquist’s (1934–2020) novel Musikanternas uttåg (1978,
published in English as The March of the Musicians in 1985):
Musikanternas uttåg skildrar en brytpunkt där något började röra på sig. Men
det var inget som kom från ovan. Det var enskilda personer som tog strid i det
lilla: i familjen, på arbetsplatser och i samhället. Dessa människor riskerade storasaker för små framsteg, de gjorde det för sin överlevnads skull och misslyckades
ideligen. Med tiden fick de dock fler att ansluta sig, och stegvis skapades en förändring. Det kom inte gratis. I boken upprepas ett mantra som fångar denna premiss: Det gives alltid något bättre än döden.
[…] Även om de fackliga framstegen gjordes i en annan tid, under en industriell blomstringsperiod och i ett annat politiskt klimat, så har det likafullt gjorts
en gång i vårt land av människor som aldrig hade gjort det förut.9 (Teglund 2021a,
112–113)Thus, Teglund emphasises the differences between the precariat and the working
class of the welfare state, while at the same time identifying similarities between
today’s precariat and the working class during the period before the welfare state.
That he anchors this comparison in a discussion of a novel is interesting, since
it points to the possibility of using literature to understand and criticise classsociety, and even to inspire struggles against class injustices. It is also interestingthat the discussion is anchored in this particular novel. Musikanternas uttåg begins with a scene describing how an agitator who has come to organise workers

Writing (for) the Precariat51

in northern Sweden is lynched by the very same workers. In Cykelbudet this isinterpreted as a consequence of the agitator being an outsider. “Det går aldrig att
bara komma utifrån och tro att man ska få med sig vem som helst,”10 the protagonist’s father concludes (Teglund 2021a, 112). Thus, Cykelbudet thematises
in advance the critique that would be directed at its author upon its publication
by some critics. But it also shows that there has always been a distance between
workers (who have not yet become a class for itself) and organisers. And thestory about the lynched agitator is actually presented as a story about the beginning of the rise of the Swedish labour movement, which would soon become oneof the most powerful such movements in the world.
Of course, narratives about the precariat that stress its resemblance to theworking class and argue that the solution to the injustices it suffers is traditional
labour-movement politics could be read as examples of the kind of anachronismthat Marx ridicules in Brumaire, where he discusses how during revolutionary
processes people often “summon up the spirits of the past.” This is something that
Marx warns socialists about. “The social revolution,” he writes, “cannot create
its poetry from the past but only from the future” (2002, 22). It might be that in
Sweden, where the labour movement was the dominant political power throughout most of the twentieth century, those who oppose the exploitation suffered by
the precariat are stuck in older kinds of political thinking, and that the works of
Teglund and Sunvisson should thus be viewed as “poetry from the past.”
However, in Sweden it has been the labour movement, and especially theunions, that have historically secured for workers the labour-market security,
the absence of which constitutes the precariat. And even if Swedish unions are
not quite as powerful today as they once were—after all, if they had been, there
would exist no precariat—they are still more potent than in most other countries. For example, as Teglund details in Cykelbudet, the bicycle couriers working for Foodora in Sweden did eventually manage to get a collective agreement
between their employer and the transport workers’ union. The union for which
Sunvisson works has also been quite successful in their efforts to help paperlessmigrant workers. For example, in many cases they have managed to help workers secure wage settlements from employers that have tried to cheat them. Thus,
it is hard to see why unionising should be a bad strategy for fighting precarious
working conditions.
Furthermore, Marx’s ridiculing of bourgeois revolutionaries dressed up in
Roman costumes does not mean that he dismisses history as a political resource.
For example, he stresses that in its Roman costumes, the bourgeoisie developed
an unexpected but much needed heroism.11 When contemporary writers conjure up images of older class struggles and narratives about how in the past workers have managed to overcome problems similar to those faced by the precariat

52Magnus Nilsson

today, this might very well be an important source of inspiration for contemporary struggles. In fact, this is no new literary-political strategy. At least since the1940s, many Swedish working-class writers—the earlier-mentioned poet Sjödin (Nilsson 2021) for one, but also the prominent working-class novelist Folke
Fridell (1904–1985) (Nilsson 2014)—have promoted a revival of the ethics andpolitics of the early socialist labour movement.
Trying to create class consciousness beyond differences and divisions is also
nothing new. The formation of the Swedish working class as a class for itself
through the labour movement did include the creation of alliances between different groups, such as agricultural and industrial workers or workers in the public and private sectors. In addition to this, the social-democratic labour movement also forged an alliance between blue-collar and white-collar workers under
the umbrella term of “wage earners.” Working-class literature contributed to thisprocess. Lo-Johansson’s works about statare not only made it possible for thatcollective to develop a shared consciousness, but also contributed to the creationof solidarity and political alliances between the statare and other groups of workers within the labour movement, and thus to their joint formation as a class foritself, despite the many differences between them. This is a good reminder thatthe formation of a class for itself is a creative process that always involves a constant making—or re-making—of a common identity (Eiden-Offe 2017; Thompson 1977) beyond differences and divisions.

Concluding Remarks
In their works, Teglund and Sunvisson contribute to the creation of what
Philipsen and Rys call “a shared socioeconomic imaginary, which allows one notmerely to speak about precarity,” but also to act against it, or, to put it in Marxist
terms, a class consciousness that could transform the precariat into a class foritself. A key feature of this imaginary is the portrayal of the precariat as a heterogenous collective with blurred borders, made up of people who nevertheless, despite their differences, share certain economic conditions and political interests,
not only with each other, but also with other workers. Another important feature is the insistence that it is through more or less traditional labour-movement
politics—and, in particular, through unions—that the injustices suffered by the
precariat can be overcome. This means that the foundation for the precariat’s
formation as a class for itself suggested by Teglund and Sunvisson is perhaps notbest described as a “socioeconomic” but as an economic and political imaginary.
At first glance, this seems to indicate that contemporary Swedish literature
about the precariat is rather different from traditional working-class literature,Writing (for) the Precariat53

which is generally described as the literary expression of a social class sharing not
only economic and political interest but also—or even primarily—a life world, aculture and an identity. But even if there are differences, they should not be exaggerated. As I hope that I have managed to demonstrate above, Sunvisson andTeglund’s relationship to the precariat is actually much like that between older
working-class writers and the working class, and their aesthetical-political strategies to a large degree resemble those found in traditional working-class literature.
As I pointed out in the beginning of this chapter, many scholars argue that“culture and the precarity concept can elucidate each other,” as Hogg puts it. My
analyses seem to confirm this. First of all, I hope that I have been able to showthat literary responses to precarious employment bring to the fore questions
about literature and its relationship to class that might function as catalysts forrevising some received ideas, not least about the tradition of working-class literature and its politics. I also think that my analysis of Swedish novels about precarious work can challenge an often-repeated argument in contemporary research,
namely that, in general, literary representations of the precariat are pessimistic.
For example, Liam Connell has claimed that novels about the precariat are mostly characterised by political hopelessness, and Mads Simonsen has argued that“in the art and literature that engages with the precariat” it is hard to find much
validation of Standing’s optimism regarding the possibilities for authors to create
community and solidarity (Simonsen 2021, 59; Connell 2021, 35). In contemporary Swedish literature, things look somewhat different. While recognising thatthe precariat is politically weak, authors such as Teglund and Sunvisson nevertheless insist that it is meaningful to fight for its rights. This, I hope, can serve asa good illustration of the need not to generalise about the relationship between
literature and the precariat, but always to analyse it in its specific contexts.
I also think that my analysis can say something about the precariat. If nothing else, it can provide input to discussions about how to understand its possible
transformation into a class for itself. According to Standing (2011, 155), “twentieth-century labourism” is “unattractive” to the precariat. Teglund’s and Sunvisson’s novels contradict this claim, showing that—in a Swedish context!—traditional working-class politics seems to be a quite attractive, but not unproblematic,
option in the struggle against precarious working conditions. Perhaps my analysis can also contribute to the discussion of the much-debated question about the
precariat’s relationship to the working class. Standing’s conceptualisation of the
precariat is based on it being different from the traditional working class, especially that of the welfare-state era. Others, however, have argued that it should
rather be viewed as a part of the working class and have emphasised its similarities to the proletariat during the period before the emergence of welfare states(Breman 2013; see e.g. Bieler 2013). The facts that Sunvisson’s Svenska palmen

54Magnus Nilsson

has similarities with older working-class literature, that Teglund in Cykelbudet
proposes unionising as the way forward in the struggle against precarious work,and that both authors highlight similarities between the contemporary precariat
and the working class before the emergence of welfare states all seem to support
the latter idea. Thus, these works could be read as a warning against creating (andgeneralising) a radical opposition between the precariat and the working class.
Teglund’s and Sunvisson’s literary representations of the precariat are, to someextent, different from those found in literature from other countries, being (relatively) optimistic about the possibility of fighting precarious working conditions,and promoting (relatively) traditional working-class politics. This is a result ofdifferences pertaining to both the literary and political situation, which need to
be analysed further. Hopefully, such analyses could function as catalysts for abetter understanding of the precariat, the literature about it and the relationshipbetween them. And that could make it possible not only to talk about precarious
work with more precision, but also to act against it with greater force.

Notes
1.

2.

3.
4.

The research presented in this text has been conducted within the research environment Precariat, Precarity and Precariousness in (Post) Welfare-State Scandinavian Literatures, which is funded by the Swedish Research Council (Project ID: 2022–01839).
In the study of working-class literature, there has been a turn in recent years to anincreased focus on the specificity of working-class literatures from different times andplaces, and to an increased interest in comparisons between them, which constitutes
an important source of inspiration for this chapter (see e.g. Lennon and Nilsson 2017,2020).
“[F]alling deeper into the precariat.”
The political functions of literature are not always results of the authors’ intentions. In
general, it is the uses of literature by its readers that generate political effects. In thischapter, I analyse how Teglund’s and Sunvisson’s representations of precarious work
could be used as platforms for the construction of class consciousness. However, bothwriters have expressed political intentions that point in this direction. At the literary
festival Littfest in Umeå 2022, Teglund was asked how literature (including Cykelbudet) can contribute to better conditions on the labour market. In his answer, he emphasised the importance of making those working under precarious conditions visible,
and aware of their visibility. That could certainly be read as an ambition to make themclass-conscious. And the same can be said of Sunvisson’s (2021, 6) statement, in his
foreword to Svenska palmen, that he wants to use literature to turn the migrant workers he describes into “subjects.”

Writing (for) the Precariat55
5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

“He had thought that he belonged to the city, just like he had thought that he belonged
to the workers who could make demands […]. He had thought so, but didn’t think so
anymore.”“We renovate, and the price goes up one million. The material costs two hundred andfifty thousand, we get fifty each and the boss maybe gets a hundred. Where does therest come from? After all, the price has gone up another half a million. The extra halfmillion is the real price of our labour.”“In the passing moment of clarity, he saw the right time coming, he saw their combined power tearing down the city walls from within.” It is worth noting the similarities between this ending and that of Sinclair’s The Jungle (2006). There too, the ending
is utopian, and the coming triumph is described as a conquering of the city: “Chicago
will be ours! Chicago will be ours! CHICAGO WILL BE OURS!”. In both cases, thetriumph of working-class politics is expressed in terms of a conquering of the city.
“Ernfrid and Siri benefit from numerous social improvements. Five years after Jonas’
death, in 1938, comes the first-ever legislation about paid vacation. Twelve days of paid
leisure every year. It will get even better gradually. Four decades later, toward the endof Ernfrid’s working life, paid vacation for industrial workers has been extended to five
weeks. He works in the factory his whole life and is a pensioner in the eighties, before
dying in 1990 after a short period of illness. A political historian could argue that helived and died in parallel with the golden era of traditional social democracy.”“The March of the Musicians describes a turning-point when something began to
move. But it wasn’t something that came from above. It was individuals who fought
where they were: in their families, in their workplaces and in society. These people
took big risks for little progress, they did it for their survival and they often failed. Intime, however, they convinced more and more people to join them and gradually theycreated change. It wasn’t for free. In the book a mantra that captures this premise isrepeated: There is always something better than death. […] Even if the rise of the unions
happened in another time, in a period of industrial flourishing and in a different political climate, it is a fact that it has been done once before in our country, and that it wasdone by people who had never done it before.”
10. “It never works to come from the outside and believe that everyone will join you.”
11. See also Eiden-Offe’s analysis of so-called romantic critique of capitalism (i.e. critiquefounded in values from the past). Against its condemnation by, among others, Georg
Lukács for being backward-looking, Eiden-Offe (2017, 18) stresses that it expresses a
critique of contemporary conditions and thus can have real political effects here andnow.

56Magnus Nilsson

References
Berggren, Henrik. 2010. Underbara dagar framför oss: En biografi över Olof Palme. Stockholm: Norstedts.
Bieler, Andreas. 2013. “Guy Standing The Precariat.” Capital & Class 37, no. 2: 322–325.
Branting, Hjalmar. 1930. Litteraturkritik och varia. Vol. XI: Tal och skrifter. Stockholm:
Tidens förlag.
Breman, Jan. 2013. “A bogus concept?” New Left Review 84 (November/December): 130–138.
Connell, Liam. 2017. Precarious Labour and the Contemporary Novel. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Connell, Liam. 2021. “Anxious Reading: The Precarity Novel and the Affective Class.” In
Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, edited by Emily J. Hogg and Peter
Simonsen, 27–41. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
de Veen, Lucas. 2021. “Utländsk arbetskraft sliter för våra blåbär.” Dala-Demokraten,
15 July 2021, 14.
Eiden-Offe, Patrick. 2017. Die Poesie der Klasse: Romantischer Antikapitalismus und die
Erfindung des Proletariats. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Furuland, Lars, and Johan Svedjedal. 2006. Svensk arbetarlitteratur. Stockholm: Atlas.
Henriksson, Lars. 2021a. “Gigarbetaren måste föra sin egen talan.” Göteborgs-Posten,
4 October 2021, 29.
Henriksson, Lars. 2021b. “Varför infiltrerar journalisterna bara arbetarklassen?” Göteborgs-Posten, 23 September 2021, 40–41.
Hogg, Emily J. 2021. “Introduction.” In Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture,edited by Emily J. Hogg and Peter Simonsen, 1–24. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Hogg, Emily J., and Peter Simonsen, eds. 2021. Precarity in Contemporary Literature andCulture. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Lennon, John, and Magnus Nilsson, eds. 2017. Working-Class Literature(s): Historical andInternational Perspectives. Vol. 1, Stockholm Studies in Culture and Aesthetics. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Lennon, John, and Magnus Nilsson, eds. 2020. Working-Class Literature(s): Historical andInternational Perspectives. Vol. 2, Stockholm Studies in Culture and Aesthetics. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press.
Marx, Karl. 2000. Capital, Volume I. London: Electric Book Company.
Marx, Karl. 2002. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” In Marx’s ‘Eighteenth
Brumaire’: (post)modern interpretations, edited by Mark Cowling and James Martin,
19–109. London: Pluto Press.
Mral, Brigitte. 1985. Frühe schwedische Arbeiterdichtung: Poetische Beiträge in sozialdemokratischen Zeitungen 1882–1900. Uppsala: Avd. för litteratursociologi, Litteraturvetenskapliga inst., Uppsala universitet.

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Nilsson, Magnus. 2014. Literature and Class: Aesthetical-Political Strategies in Modern
Swedish Working-Class Literature. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität.
Nilsson, Magnus. 2019. “Class, Taste, and Literature: The Case of Ivar Lo-Johansson andSwedish Working-Class Literature.” Journal of Working-Class Studies 4, no. 1: 24–36.
Nilsson, Magnus. 2021. Kampdiktare i folkhemmet: Arbetarpoeten Stig Sjödin. Stockholm:
Verbal.
Prawer, Salomon Siegbert. 2011. Karl Marx and World Literature. London: Verso.
Rys, Michiel, and Bart Philipsen. 2021a. “Introduction: Poetics and Precarity—Literary
Representations of Precarious Work, Past and Present.” In Literary Representations ofPrecarious Work, 1840 to the Present, edited by Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen, 1–19.
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
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1840 to the Present. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Simonsen, Peter. 2021. “Performing Precarity: Threatening the Audience in Gary Owen’s
Iphigenia in Splott.” In Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, edited byEmily J. Hogg and Peter Simonsen, 56–71. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
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Sunvisson, Pelle. 2021. Svenska palmen. Stockholm: Verbal.
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1.2
Making Visible the Invisible
Spanish Post-Crisis Fiction
Christian Claesson

Introduction
The year 2008 was a watershed moment in Spanish post-dictatorship politics andculture. Before that, the national narrative declared that Spain was a prime example of political, economic and cultural progress, from the peaceful transition
to democracy in the 1970s to the politically stable and economically successful
country of the 2000s (see for example Muñoz Molina 2013). Spain had surely had
its problems—widespread and engrained corruption, ETA’s political violence,growing unemployment and inequalities—but, on the whole, both from within
and without, the country was seen as a solid western European democracy. The
far-reaching economic, political, cultural and social consequences of the financial crisis of 2008, ignited by the fall of Lehman Brothers, shook Spanish society to the core: the housing bubble exploded, unemployment rose to 27% (57%
among adults under 25), the general labour market was increasingly precarised,over 1.7 million people were evicted from their homes between 2008 and 2019,
newly built twenty-story buildings and airports were finished but never used,emigration outstripped immigration, and prostitution, trafficking and drug
abuse increased significantly (Naredo 2010; El País 2011; Universidad de Barcelona n.d.; Cúneo 2020). The crisis also sparked a wide array of grassroots mobilisation, political changes, intellectual debate and cultural activity. The massive
demonstration and occupation of Madrid’s central square on 15 May 2011, led to
the 15M, a multifarious movement that rejected party politics and organised in
popular assemblies, intent on targeting what was perceived as a political class outof touch with society and on fostering consciousness-raising campaigns. New
parties were founded: the left-wing Podemos sprung out of the political energyof the 15M (and, in some way, also neutralised it), and the extreme right party
Vox rose to be the country’s third political power, partly as a reaction to theCatalan independence movement. In the wake of these events, writers, ­artists

60

Christian Cl aesson

and intellectuals studied and represented the effects of the crisis, fostering ageneral repoliticisation of Spanish culture (Claesson 2018b). In this chapter, I
will explore how the crisis has made visible what used to be out of sight, veiled,repressed and unconscious, and how it is represented in what might be termed‘post-crisis fiction’. I will focus on the development of the concept of precarity
in the Spanish context, which largely has replaced the notion of class, and how
work, gender and subjectivity are represented in Isaac Rosa’s La mano invisible(2011) and Cristina Morales’s Lectura fácil (2018).

Spanish Precarity in the 2000s
During the 2000s, the concept of precarity was beginning to enter the critical
vocabulary as a way of referring to working conditions under neoliberalism. It
is described by Maribel Casas-Cortés as a “toolbox concept” (2014, 221), whose
validity and use depend on time, place and from what perspective and for what
purposes it is discussed and used. As Emily Hogg says, “the term’s descriptive
precision—the extent to which it explains actually existing social reality—is lessimportant than the way it is put to work by individuals and groups in order tocontribute to the reshaping of those social realities” (2021, 1). The term comesfrom the Latin precārius, meaning “supplicant” or “dependent on the favor ofanother”; a precarious person is, therefore, one who, instead of having rights andlegal protection, is at the mercy of the favours of others. Precarity itself is neither
Western nor contemporary—in many parts of the world it is more the norm thanthe exception, which has also been the case for most of the history of Western
capitalism—but it is in Europe that it enters the critical and theoretical dictionary. When it is formulated as a concept, it is precisely because it comes to define
the change in the labour market after the first neoliberal reforms in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu theorises the notion and underlines the effect thatjob insecurity has on individual subjectivity and the possibility of collective action; the problem is not only the lack of regularity and permanence in the labour
market, but also the uncertainty, disorientation and loss of meaning that this lackcauses (1998, 82). The inability to anticipate the future makes existence more
uncertain and leads to the deterioration of the entire relationship with the world,
time and space, permeating both the conscious and the unconscious (ibid., 3).
The effects of precarity, therefore, go far beyond mere working conditions, affecting the existential dimension of life.
Judith Butler’s post-9/11 work is foundational in scholarship on precarity, anddistinguishes between this term and ‘precariousness’. Precariousness is the inevitable vulnerability of social existence, the fact that our lives are, in a sense,Making Visible the Invisible61

always dependent on others. This meaning is established in opposition to thedefinition of the masculine, autonomous and free subject; this view is a fantasy,
since what constitutes a body to a certain extent is its dependence on other bodies (Hogg 2021, 6). Precarity, on the other hand, is the way in which vulnerability
is organised in social situations, intensified for some subjects and minimisedfor others, according to the corresponding political structures. Hence the value
and complexity of understanding these two sides of the concept in conjunction:“it encompasses the risk, insecurity and instability that are intrinsic to sociality, but draws attention to the mutable and historically variable practices that
intensify the experience of vulnerability in particular times and places and allow
certain individuals and groups to evade reckoning with their dependence onothers” (ibid., 8). Something similar occurs with the concept of subject, whose
double condition Butler summarises in the following question: “How can it be,that the subject taken to be the condition for and instrument of agency, is at thesame time the effect of subordination, understood as the deprivation of agency?”(1997, 10) These thoughts are developed by Isabell Lorey, in her important Stateof Insecurity: Government of the Precarious (2015). Lorey’s book focuses on the
Foucauldian idea of governmentality, which denotes the overlap of individual
self-rule and the political rule of the nation-state, and she studies precariousness
as a technique of the neoliberal era, ruling through insecurity. In this regime,
the double nature of the subject is exploited: the modern individual is both active and passive, both free and subjugated, to the point where it is impossible
to separate one from the other. Exposure to uncertainty and danger is not only
restricted to working life, but to existence—the body and subjectivation—in
general. It can open up new potential for life and work at the same time that
it is a threat; it is important to remember that neoliberalism takes advantageof the countercultural rejection of Fordist labour monotony, and offers a more
flexible, cultural, cooperative and communicative alternative, often centred on
immaterial labour. However, it is not necessarily an emancipatory change, butrather something that is decidedly ambivalent, “modes of self-government that
represent a conformist self-development, a conformist self-determination enabling extraordinary governability” (Lorey 2015, 14). As Jornet Somoza points
out, the disciplinary mechanisms imposed by the neoliberal order are various:“individualismo institucionalizado, régimen de competitividad como principio
básico de todas las relaciones socio-productivas, gestión del yo convertido enemprendedor-de-sí, financiarización de la propia vida, imposición de un estado
securitario que decide qué vidas son vivibles”1 (2017, 158).
The first time these thoughts had a concrete political mobilisation on an international scale was through EuroMayDay in 2001, with demonstrations that began in Italy and quickly spread to Spain and other countries. For the precarious

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Posters for EuroMayDay demonstrations in Madrid, Milan and Barcelona.

at the beginning of the twenty-first century, traditional 1 May demonstrations
stood for the nostalgia of a unionist past that had little to do with the present
and that did not represent the situation of young people who had just entered
the labour market. To some extent, the historically strong Spanish unions had
lost legitimacy and support during the 1990s (partly because they were perceived
as having allowed unemployment benefits cuts and the legalisation of temporary work agencies) and younger people, also wary of the unions’ ties to politicalpower, tended not to unionise (Casas-Cortés 2014, 207–209). According to Casas-Cortés, the EuroMayDay phenomenon introduced an element of ambiguity
to the discourse on precariousness, criticising its negative consequences, but also
showing some of its potential: “A series of emerging actors, texts, and interventions linked to EuroMayDay networks continued a resignification of precarity
based on the logic of and, and, and … (in the sense of Deleuze’s call for complex
multiplicity rather than reductionist exclusion), clustering multiple and at times
contradictory meanings” (2014, 210; emphasis in original). Indeed, until the lastdemonstration in 2011, EuroMayDay increased its ambitions: the poster for thedemonstration in Madrid in 2008 mentions basic income, papers for everyone,
decent housing, social rights, free culture, redistribution of work and wealth,public services and sexual freedoms as its demands.
In 2004, before the publication of the texts that are considered foundationalin the study of precariousness (the works of Butler and Lorey, as well as Guy
Standing’s The Precariat), the Spanish collective Precarias a la deriva published A
la deriva por los circuitos de la precariedad femenina (Drifting through the circuitsof female precariousness), a truly pioneering book in its situated research of precarity. For the Precarias, precarity is the “conjunto de condiciones, materiales ysimbólicas, que determinan una incertidumbre acerca del acceso sostenido a losMaking Visible the Invisible63

Cartoon by Martin Ferran depicting the mileurista.
Reproduced with permission © Martin Ferran

recursos esenciales para el pleno desarrollo de la vida de un sujeto”2 (2004, 28).
The inspiration comes from the French situationists, but here the project is given
a clearly feminist cue: it is no longer about the fluid itinerary of the autonomousand free man, but about walking interviews with a series of diverse precarious
women to some very specific places in a city that limit and condition experience and possibilities, and often blur the boundaries between work and life. The
project’s ambition was to constitute a situated and heterogeneous knowledge:“partir de sí, para no quedarse en sí (como querría el capital y el patriarcado);
desobedecer las segmentaciones y fronteras del capitalismo global integradopara estar juntas y revueltas; aferrar la ciudad-empresa como terreno común yde conflicto: situarse dentro y contra (la precarización, la movilidad forzada, el
acceso desigual a los recursos, la explotación, el miedo, la soledad…)”3 (ibid.,11). More specifically, the idea of the “drifts” is to locate and map the ways ofliving, thinking and feeling time, space, income, communication, relational andcare networks, conflict, hierarchy, risk and the body (ibid., 18). Although neoMarxism had already pointed out the importance of immaterial work (affective,
communicative, creative), especially through the work of Silvia Federici, the Precarias wanted to maintain their singularity so as not to reproduce “false homogeneities”; the conditions that determine a precarious experience vary greatly andcombating them requires specific strategies. Likewise, A la deriva emphasisesthat the critique of affective and immaterial work tends to forget the feminist
aspect according to which reproductive work is unpaid, but at the same time essential for the functioning of the capitalist economy. The result of the ambitious
investigation of the Precarias is a very varied series of testimonies of urban life

64Christian Cl aessonin the neoliberal economy, with immediate strength and concreteness, which
defines and studies the female experience of precarity. In this period, the term
mileurista, popularised by Espido Freire in two books—Mileuristas: Retrato dela generación de los mil euros (2006) and La generación de las mil emociones: Mileuristas II (2008)—came to denote the young educated professional who earned
only a thousand euros per month, despite having a full-time job. Only a few years
later, the mileurismo would not be seen with pity, but with envy.
Spanish fiction was largely oblivious to the underlying conflicts of Spanish society: on the one hand, the consequences of neoliberal capitalism and any sort ofclass antagonism; on the other, the narrative of Spain’s peaceful and unproblematic transition from an almost forty-year-long Fascist dictatorship to a capitalist,
liberal democracy (for a study on the presence of Francoism in Spanish society
today, see Faber 2021). Referring to pre-crisis fiction, David Becerra Mayor talks
about “la novela de la no-ideología,” novels that displace any kind of class conflict in favour of individual and subjective accounts:
La novela española actual reproduce, inconscientemente (y acaso muy conscientemente, cuando la carrera literaria, las ventas, la fama, el reconocimiento
público, etc., predominan sobre la escritura), la ideología del capitalismo avanzado al desplazar las contradicciones radicales del sistema por otras asumibles por
su ideología. La novela de la no-ideología borra las huellas de lo político y lo social para ofrecer una interpretación de la realidad en que todo conflicto se localiza
en el interior del sujeto. Este desplazamiento de las tensiones sociales hacia laspulsiones subjetivas contribuye, por defecto, a la construcción imaginaria de unmundo perfecto y cerrado, aconflictivo. Esto es, el “Fin de la Historia.”4 (2013, 65)

Becerra points out that this not only applies to novels set in the present, but also
in the past: for example, the popular Civil War novel rarely focuses on ideological conflict, but rather uses the War as a setting for individual dilemmas, or evenas a dramatic backdrop for thriller or romantic stories (Becerra Mayor 2015).
However, there were exceptions. Belén Gopegui thoroughly investigates the ideological bearings of Spanish society in fictional form in Lo real (2001), as well as
the possibilities of real class struggle in El padre de Blancanieves (2007). Marta
Sanz places her fiction on the intersections between class, gender and subjectivity in Susana y los viejos (2006), and from a more bodily-situated perspectivein La lección de anatomía (2008). Isaac Rosa studies the ideological cover-ups
related to the transition to democracy (in Spanish, significantly, capitalised as laTransción) in El vano ayer (2004) and to the Spanish Civil War in ¡Otra maldita
novela sobre la guerra civil! (2007). Rafael Chirbes, the most meticulously realistof these four writers, relates the political tensions by the time of Franco’s death inMaking Visible the Invisible65

La caída de Madrid (2000), the dreams of revolution in Los viejos amigos (2003)
and the construction bubble in Crematorio (2007); his 2013 novel on the corruption in Spain, En la orilla, was awarded the prestigious Premio Nacional de
Literatura and hailed as the great novel of the crisis (Rodríguez Marcos 2013).
Particularly interesting are two books published under a pseudonym: El año que
tampoco hicimos la revolución (The Year We Didn’t Make the Revolution Either,2005), published by the collective Todoazén (two writers and one economist,
all anonymous), and Fernando Díaz’s Panfleto para seguir viviendo (Pamphlet to
Keep on Living, 2007). Todoazén’s book is a chronological collection of hundredsof authentic newspapers clippings from 2003 that, read together as a continuous
narrative, display a country sleepwalking toward economic and social catastrophe, making clear that anyone who was surprised by the 2008 crisis had not readthe papers carefully. The Panfleto, on the other hand, is a hard-hitting story of ayoungster who, out of lived experience and autodidact ideological schooling, realises that aggressive political militancy, or even taking up arms, is the only way
to break the current neoliberal chokehold. The fact that both books are publishedanonymously points to the reluctance of Spanish society to face the growing tensions in the country (Bértolo 2015). Despite the generally apolitical tendenciesof Spanish literature, then, these novels are testimonies to the fact that there wasa staunchly political pre-crisis literature, a literature that laid bare the ideologicalunderpinnings, social inequalities and class frictions of contemporary Spanish
society.

The 2008 Crisis
If the 2000s were the decade in which precarity became part of the working conditions under the neoliberal regime in the Western world, in the 2010s, it has
spread throughout society on a much greater scale. The situation has deteriorated for the already vulnerable and has fully reached a middle class that believed
itself to be protected; the gig economy has turned many workers into day labourers, without stability, security or access to the welfare system; and migration
flows have provided an army of the needy as cheap labour. Some critics deny theexistence of a new precarity, arguing that precarity has always been and always
will be, plain and simple, the condition of the working class under capitalism(Di Bernardo 2016), but it seems certain that the situation has changed for theworse for large part of the population in the last decade. If anything, the conceptof precarity has spread far beyond the labour sphere, being “una condición social y geográficamente determinada que se plasma, de manera visible (a veces
obscenamente), en una multitud de coyunturas laborales, educativas, sanitarias,

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migratorias, habitacionales y salariales, pero también psicológicas, afectivas ysimbólicas”5 (Álvarez Blanco and Gómez L. Quiñones 2016, 12). Among theseprecarities, “también hay que tener muy presente la precariedad para imaginar,
pensar y actuar coherentemente contra la precariedad”6 (ibid., 14).
The 2010s began with the economic recession as a result of the bankruptcy
of Lehman Brothers and ended with the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, beginning with one crisis and ending with another. The crisis of 2008 has not led toan economic and social recovery, a return to the “normality” of before or, muchless, the advent of a “more humane capitalism.” If the events of recent years haverevealed anything, it is that “normality” will never return. Moreover, it is evennecessary to ask whether that era—a relatively stable Fordism managed by a welfare state that offered security in exchange for labour in the post-war era—was so
normal or if it was, instead, a historical anomaly that in Spain lasted about thirty
years and in a handful of Western countries a little longer. Luisa Elena Delgado
uses the concept of psychoanalytic fantasy, the one that “hace posible e imposible
a la vez la identificación colectiva”7 and that “no es la antagonista de la realidadsocial, sino, por el contrario, su condición preexistente, su pegamento psíquico”8(2014, 68) to characterise that supposed Spanish normality from which the conflicts of national identity and the Franco dictatorship have been suppressed. The
same could be said of “normality” before the 2008 crisis: what are now longed
for as times of abundance and stability were actually inflated by loans and disguised by a “left” that had long since ceased to have the interests of the people as
their greatest concern, with clearly appreciable cracks. As Palmar Álvarez Blanco
and Antonio Gómez Quiñones state, “sin el teatro alucinado de auto-representaciones y auto-celebraciones, sin ese retablo de las maravillas del progreso enla (post)modernidad ibérica, no se entiende la belle époque de la nueva España
democrática y de su experiencia cotidiana”9 (2016, 14).
In what follows, I will define what could be called Spanish ‘post-crisis fiction’,rather than the occasionally used crisis fiction (or novela de la crisis). As I discuss elsewhere (Claesson 2015), the latter label is perhaps too restrictive, since
it seems to refer (as in Rodríguez Marcos 2014) to a relatively uniform subgenre
of novels that include the crisis and its consequences as their main topic. Some
commentators question whether the Spanish crisis has actually ended, since thesocial and economic situation of the country is still considerably worse than before 2008. Nevertheless, a crisis is, by definition, something sudden and decisive—a turning point—so, in that sense, it is more accurate to say that Spaniards
are living the consequences of the crisis rather than the crisis itself. Likewise, the‘post’ prefix does not entail an overcoming of the effects of the crisis, but rather
the questioning or reconfiguration of these effects, as a way of understanding
the changing social, cultural and political landscape. The post-crisis novel, then,Making Visible the Invisible67

would be a novel that attempts to understand the social, cultural and politicalchanges by questioning the effects of the crisis, and not merely fiction that registers the consequences without further consideration.

La mano invisible: the Narrativity of WorkOne of the most thorough, researched, overwhelming and insightful novels everwritten on the phenomenon of work in Spain, Isaac Rosa’s La mano invisible (TheInvisible Hand, 2011), also stands as a bridge head between the before and after
the crisis: it describes the labour situation of the 2000s, with mostly traditionaljobs and a subjectivity formed during the years of a relatively functional welfare
state, but points toward a more precarious future—and toward fiction’s heightenedinterest in work and class issues. In this novel, we follow twelve unnamed workers—a bricklayer, a butcher, a car mechanic, a cleaner, a secretary, a programmer,a bartender, a security guard, a jack-of-all-trades, a telemarketer, an assembly line
worker and a seamstress—while they are really at work, through all their movements, pain, monotony, stress, tiredness, pride and rivalry, but also their own reflections on the work they are performing as well as on the meaning, place andfunction of work itself. The particular circumstance of these (manual) workers isthat they are not doing at all typical work in a typical workplace; they perform thesame tasks over and over again—the bricklayer builds a wall only to tear it down,
the butcher slaughters only sick animals that are thrown away, the car mechanictakes a car apart only to put it together again—in an enormous warehouse, lit up
by spotlights and in front of an audience. Nobody knows neither the organisation nor the rationale behind the setup, but it becomes a major event over several
months, with large audiences and discussions among intellectuals, academics,
trade unionists and the general public in newspapers and on television. Is it a performance, a piece of theatre, a circus, a protest or perhaps a publicity campaign?
Can the workers actually be said to be working when their labour does not lead
anywhere, even though they are paid and their bodies hurt at the end of an eighthour workday? After a first few weeks of stable work, the invisible employer raises
demands that causes frictions and conflicts in the group, both in front of the audience (who love the sight of conflict) and during the after-work drinks. At the end,
the rising tempo, the sense that the workers are taken advantage of and the diminishing audience leads to resignations and finally to a complete shutdown, andneither the characters nor the readers ever learn who was behind the whole thing.
Among other things, the novel is an exploration of the dynamics of visibility
and invisibility of the modern labour market. The title is of course a nod to Adam
Smith’s market metaphor (never more than a utopian liberal idea), but more spe-

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Christian Cl aessoncifically to the opaque labour relations under neoliberal capitalism. The workers
are hired by a temporary work agency and never meet any managers—they do
not know who the employer is, nor, indeed, what kind of employer it is. Eachtime they drag their feet or silently protest against an already utterly meaningless task (typing fewer pages or building fewer walls than expected) they are
penalised through a salary reduction. It is not until several months later that they
discover the supervisor has been right among them: the programmer is surveilling his co-workers’ every step, in order to develop a computer programme toimprove labour efficiency. The programme is aptly called Panoptic, as a reference to Bentham’s panopticon, and particularly to its application to modernday working life, as predicted in Shoshana Zuboff ’s now classic In the Age of theSmart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988). Surveillance is moreover
exercised by the audience of the spectacle: invisible behind the powerful spotlights, they laugh, boo and urge the workers to talk less and work more.
The invisibility also applies to work and workers themselves—the hand thatcleans the toilet, slaughters the animal, sews the shirt—in modern society. To the
middle class, mainly working in the service sector, it may seem as if things grow bythemselves. Thinking about the audience, whom he labels ‘work tourists’, the bricklayer wonders whether they ever reflected upon who actually built their buildings:
si alguna vez al llegar desde la calle levantarán la vista y al ver el edificio se preguntarán cómo fue su construcción, cómo aguantaron el frío y la lluvia hombres
subidos a un andamio para enfoscar la fachada; si alguna vez han dedicado unsolo pensamiento por pequeño que sea a quienes se esforzaron, se fatigaron, sudaron, se dolieron y desgastaron sus cuerpos para hacer posibles esas paredes, ese
techo, esa escalera, ese hueco del ascensor por el que alguna vez cae un albañil que
nunca será recordado con una placa de agradecimiento en la entrada a la casa;
incluso si se les ha ocurrido pensar que ese edificio lo hicieron hombres, no sehizo solo, no fueron las máquinas ni trajeron módulos prefabricados, como esas
parejas que se compran un piso y cada domingo van a ver cómo avanza la obra, y
al no ser día de trabajo ven de una semana a otra que la casa va creciendo como si
lo hiciera sola10 (Rosa 2011, 31–32)

On another level, the novel is an attempt to fill the perceived void of actual working fictions in literature, the presumed inenarrable or even inhumane quality ofwork, epitomised by a quote by José Luis Pardo included as a postscript to the text:
Ciertamente, hay muchas narraciones que transcurren total o parcialmente en
lugares de trabajo, pero lo que estas narraciones relatan es algo que ocurre entre los personajes al margen de su mera actividad laboral, y no esa actividad en

Making Visible the Invisible69
cuanto tal, porque su brutalidad o su monotonía parecen señalar un límite a lanarratividad (¿cómo contar algo allí donde no hay nadie, donde cada uno deja deser alguien?).11 (379)

In La mano invisible, working workers occupy centre stage in a double sense,
both literally on the warehouse stage in front of the audience, and as the main
characters of the novel we are reading. Fiction fertilises and multiplies the meaning of the work at the centre of the novel. On the one hand, the fictional setupof the labour produced (or reproduced) in the warehouse makes us reflect onwhat work is and whether it still counts as work when done in an unproductive
setting, which, in turn, leads to a whole array of questions as to what actuallyconstitutes a productive and meaningful job, and whether there is any real difference between this staged work and David Graeber’s ‘bullshit jobs’ (2018). On
the other hand, the fiction of the thoroughly researched representations of workthat make up the novel denotes a real break in the hegemony of mainstream
fiction. Carmina Gustrán Loscos relates this to Jacques Rancière’s idea of the
distribution of the sensible—“the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common andthe delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it,” that is,“the delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speechand noise, that simultaneously determines the place and the stakes of politics as aform of experience” (2004, 7–8). “Placing precarious workers on a stage,” argues
Gustrán Loscos, “disrupts the distribution of the sensible” (2020, 44), and gives
these otherwise unheard workers a voice with which to stick out from that which
is normally only perceived as noise. Moreover, she also talks about work as a fiction in itself—a story that is told to us about power relations that are constructed
and therefore might be upset and changed (ibid., 47). In some sense, what isquestioned is work itself, although this idea is never fully articulated.
However, even more central than workers is work itself. Intermixed with thereflections on the work situation, daydreaming, associations and memories aredescriptions of the labour performed, often mimicking the monotony of theworking situation: “Redonda, cuadrada, redonda, cuadrada, triangular, rectangular, triangular, rectangular, mira el reloj para ver cuántos segundos tarda
en tomar una caja, llenarla y ponerla en su sitio, redonda, cuadrada, redonda,
cuadrada, triangular, rectangular, triangular, rectangular”12 (ibid., 64). The novel
gives voice to twelve workers in twelve chapters—the thirteenth worker represented, the prostitute, is significantly not given a voice and is not a part of theperformative setup—and each chapter is narrated almost in one breath, without
dialogue quotation marks or question marks, although dialogue and questions
abound (see the bricklayer quote above as an example). The free indirect speech

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throughout the text makes for a realistic testimony ordered by the discipline andirony of the narrator, a sort of stream of consciousness, with page-long sentences
and few paragraph divisions, that overwhelms the reader and puts her in thesituation of the worker. Sometimes, as in the case of the telemarketer, the monotony of work is the monotony of language itself:
Buenas tardes, podría hablar con el señor Herrera Abad, por favor. Encantada desaludarle, señor Herrera. Le llamo para. No, no es una venta telefónica. No, no voy
a ofrecerle ningún. Disculpe, buenas tardes.
Buenas tardes, podría hablar con el señor Herrera Acosta, por favor. Encantada de saludarle, señor Herrera. Le llamo para pedirle su. Sólo serán cuatro minutos, señor Herrera. No tiene que. Disculpe, buenas tardes.
Buenas tardes, podría hablar con el señor Herrera Agudo, por favor.13 (ibid.,117)

The representation of work at a concretely textual level is, ultimately, what makes
an identification with these unnamed workers in their daily routine possible.
Work may be missing even in working-class fiction, like that invisible hand thatmoves the story, as Pardo suggests, but here it is the core of the novel.
Published in 2011, Isaac Rosa’s ground-breaking novel has come to be readas post-crisis fiction, standing at the beginning of the stream of novels that insome way deal with conditions and consequences of the crisis, but it refers to alabour situation in place well before the crisis. La mano invisible certainly depicts
precarity, uncertainty and ever-increasing productivity demands, but also moregeneral, work-related issues such as monotony, boredom, class, community, unionisation and exploitation. It thus straddles the Spanish crisis: it narrates a general working situation, especially poignant in the 2000s, but also opens up for thenovelistic production of the 2010s. For all its irregularities, such as the performative setup, it relates a fairly regulated work situation. The novels published in the2010s focus more on the lack of work, refusal to work and irregular work, as wellas the general social consequences of the crisis.

Post-Crisis Fiction
In the last part of this chapter, I will briefly review how Spanish fiction14 has
responded to the precarity that has permeated society over the last ten years.
Both Isabell Lorey (2015) and Precarias a la deriva, among others, underline thedouble face of precarity: it is associated with fear and profound uncertainty, butthere is also a potential for making structural changes that may lead to a more

Making Visible the Invisible71

just society. The same applies to literature on precarity, which both represents
and challenges contemporary insecurity. On the one hand, there is a testimonial
trend of narratives, generally realistic, that integrate precarity at the level of content and make visible the life circumstances of the precariat, recounting the multitude of consequences that the 2008 crisis has had from a human and situatedperspective. In these cases, the capacity of the novel as a genre is used to put thereader in the place of the ordinary person, to humanise a crisis that tends to be
abstract, to animate the testimony with the tools of fiction, and to be a counterpart of the many essays of all kinds that analyse the crisis from a general perspective and from above. In this sense, “la precariedad, novelada siempre desde unmultiperspectivismo interseccional y multiescalar, se transforma en un locus deenunciación privilegiado desde el cual es posible replicar a la hibris del gran metarrelato supuestamente anónimo de la crisis, definiendo la movilización comoprocedente de una territorialidad en forma de ‘planetaridad situada’”15 (Bonvalot
2019, 201). On the other hand, although these aspects are clearly intertwined,
there are texts that integrate precarity at the level of form, experimenting withthe techniques and strategies they employ. This type of text is “un conjunto que
se inclina cada vez más hacia el mestizaje de los géneros, de los lenguajes y de losplanos comunicativos, y que convierte la reflexión metaliteraria en un espacio
propositivo y propulsivo”16 (Rossi 2021, ii). These texts reflect the disorientation, uncertainty and ambiguous and complex functioning of ideology also at
the textual level, what I elsewhere have called “precarious narratives” (Claesson
2016; Claesson 2018b). Sometimes these novels create a “sense of equivalence”:“The affect of crisis moves out from the narrative and is felt as a kind of reading
experience. In this way the reader is able to image lines of affinity that are capableof extending the connection between the reader and the character to precarious
subjects beyond the textual encounter” (Connell 2021, 29). Consequently, thetext can create a subjective awareness of the situation that, based on the conceptof precariousness as an operative notion, has the possibility of functioning as aplace of political action (ibid., 30). In this sense, as Hogg asserts, what mattersabout artistic texts is not primarily what they say about precarity, but the way inwhich they forge new ways of seeing and describing, new possibilities of perception and new forms of representation, to break down some of the stagnant political structures and hegemonic narratives of the contemporary moment (Hogg
2021, 13).
The Spanish post-crisis has undoubtedly grown into a literary subgenre and a
research field of its own. Nere Basabe (2018, 24–27) identifies six mayor literary
categories: (1) novels on labour and existential precarity, often in a testimonial
register, as in Javier López Menacho’s Yo, precario (2013) or Elvira Navarro’s oftquoted La trabajadora (2014); (2) critiques of consumer society and explorations

72

Christian Cl aessonof modern subjectivity, as in the fiction of Sara Mesa and Javier Moreno; (3)fictions on the migratory experience, as in Miguel Ángel Hernández’s Intento deescapada (2013); (4) political activism, as a testimony to the wide array of grassroots movements that spread throughout Spain in the aftermath of the 15 May
demonstration in 2011, as in Pablo Gutiérrez’s Democracia (2012)—a key reference in Spanish post-crisis fiction—or Alberto Olmos’s Ejército enemigo (2011);(5) rural exile stories, even called “the new rural novel,” of urbanites who flee thecity and all its ills to relocate (with a Wi-Fi connection) to the countryside; and(6) re-interpretations of the past—to the movida years of the 1980s, the Transition, the Franco dictatorship, the Civil War—in the wake of a crisis that shookthe foundations of both Spanish society and historiography. To these categories,
we might add novels on reproductive work, gender and class, like Elena Medel’s Las maravillas (2020), or fiction that questions or openly shuns work, as in
Santiago Lorenzo’s best-selling Los asquerosos (2018), work tourism, as Munir
Hachemi’s Cosas vivas (2018), or novels of revolutionary violence, as in Bruno
Galindo’s El público (2012) or one of the greatest achievements of the post-crisis
fiction era, Diego Sánchez Aguilar’s Factbook: El libro de los hechos (2018). Federico López-Terra adds that, in addition to the crisis in the story, we also have thecrisis of the story, signalling a halt in the production of meaning, where “la crisis
como interrupción tanto de narrativas personales como colectivas derivó en la
incapacidad de los sujetos de dotar de continuidad narrativa su propia historia,
de hacerse con el relato”17 (2018, 123).
A landmark event in the evolution of the genre was the surprising choice
to grant the Premio Nacional de Literatura to Cristina Morales’s Lectura fácil
in 2018—born in 1985, she is the youngest woman writer to receive the prize.
The prize is state-sponsored, bestowed by the Ministry for Culture and Sports,
which “promotes a specific type of individualism that allows the state the annual opportunity to publicly appropriate the writer/citizen’s labour for its own
purposes, which are, of course, ‘nationalistic’ in the sense that the prize servesto promote literary value that is presented as representing the nation” (Perret
2015, 78). What the novels that have won this award have in common is thatthey are not “too militantly ‘Other’ from the state’s perspective” (ibid., 83), butrather subscribe to the idea of a Spain that aligns with the political consensus
formed by the transition to democracy and the Constitution of 1978. Strikingly,
Lectura fácil is the complete opposite of the novels that normally receive thisaward. The novel tells the story of four intellectually impaired women living ina group home in Barcelona, in which different voices and genres coalesce andmirror each other—first-person narratives, court hearings, minutes from anarchist collectives in which the characters are involved, libertarian fanzines and thetexts written in the mode of “easy reading” designed for people with reading or

Making Visible the Invisible73

other intellectual impairments. On one level, it criticises a regime of Foucauldian
biopolitics, in the way it deconstructs “el modo en que los dispositivos del Estado operan en la institucionalización de los cuerpos de quienes no encajan enla normalidad y la heteronormatividad construida”18 (Becerra Mayor 2021, 145).
Here, another kind of Panopticon is installed, in which bodies and behaviours
deemed deviant are controlled by the State through sterilisation and medication
as well as apparently well-meaning measures such as welfare checks (with a set of
demands), reading groups (where reading and writing is controlled) or integral
dance, which is inclusive of individuals with and without disabilities (but where
difference is, paradoxically, homogenised). On another level, it is a furious attackon post-crisis Spain—or even Spain as state formation—in which almost nobody
is spared. The political critique is expressed especially by Nati, who was about
to complete her PhD in sociology when she suffered a nervous breakdown triggered by her pathological inability to tolerate class differences, capitalism “nonplus ultra” (ibid., 139) or especially the racist “facho-machos” (fascist-machos)that dominate Spanish society, and through the discussions in the anarchist collective that are given ample space in this long novel.
Lectura fácil may be considered the most thorough anarchist critique of Spanish post-crisis society to date, although it looks slightly different from more conventional (if that is the right word here) anarchist writings. As such, it channels
the most radical political energy of the 15M, the massive, horizontal and looselybound movement that started with the occupation of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011. The fact that the novel was awarded the Premio Nacional,in spite of the character and history of the prize, seems to be an acknowledgment
both of the force of the post-crisis novel in general and of the sprawling andradical legacy of the 15M movement. David Becerra calls the novel an example
of intransitive literature: a literature that does not commit to a previously definedgoal, that does not aim to overtake power (as would be the case of transitive literature), but rather to de-activate power from the margins, freeing itself from themechanisms that discipline bodies and subjectivities, leaving room for anyone
to discover the possibilities by exploring previously unknown territories (2021,
142). Likewise, when analysing the 15M, Amador Fernández-Savater underlines
what he calls “la fuerza de los débiles, cuyos ingredientes son la activación de losafectos y los vínculos, la elección autónoma de los tiempos y los espacios, el valor
de la igualdad y la pluralidad”19 (2021, 66). The strength of the weak, therefore, is“una guerrilla-movimiento: un ecosistema, una red autoorganizada, un mundo
en marcha”20 (ibid., 76). This is what Standing (2011, 2021) is aiming at when
he talks about the precariat as a class-in-the-making: it will never be like theworking class, with its physical meeting places, unions, faith in progress, pride
and revolutionary potential, but it can indeed constitute a common sensibility,

74

Christian Cl aessona destituent force, a rhizomatic network, a shared condition. Morales’s Lectura
fácil goes beyond the focus on precarity so common in Spanish post-crisis fiction
and hones in on precariousness and governmentality: by portraying a group of
women who struggle against (or just are outside) institutionalised individualism,
competitiveness as a core principle of society, self-entrepreneurialism, financialisation and the imposition of the security state, she questions the disciplinary
mechanisms that are both a condition and a result of neoliberal society. Instead,the novel argues (if it argues for anything) for the acknowledgment of our mutual precariousness, for the strength of the weak, for resistance in multiplicity,
for democratic horizontality and for a refusal of work and productivity. As such,
Morales’s novel becomes the most radical expression of thinking and fiction in
the post-crisis, post-15M era.
As we have seen, there was certainly political fiction and thinking before thecrisis, but it was scarce and tended to be buried under the narrative of an economically prosperous, democratically normalised and culturally homogeneous
Spain. The crisis and the massive politicisation that followed—mainly throughthe 15M—made it much more difficult for writers, critics and scholars, as well as
for society as a whole, to look the other way. It also became relevant to pinpoint
the political potential of post-crisis fiction. Maria Ayete Gil defines the politicalnovel as one that, with all the aesthetic resources of fiction, intends to intervenein the consensus view of reality, breaking the division of the common with theaim of revealing the possibility of a different, more just world (2021, 161). The
political post-crisis fiction, in contrast to a fiction that merely registers the effectsof the crisis, would thus be novels “que traten de visibilizar cuestiones derivadasde la ruina económica, moral, social y política invisibilizadas por el discurso
oficial; que traten de señalar causas, culpables y contradicciones, o de imaginar,
bien salidas, bien mundos alternativos”21 (ibid., 202–203). The post-crisis novels
that are truly political, then, are those that highlight the cracks in the hegemonic ideology, point to the possibility of other worlds and other subjectivities,
and make visible the invisible. Spanish post-crisis fiction both depicts a politicalawakening in society and imagines a way forward.

Notes
1.

“[I]nstitutionalised individualism, a regime of competitiveness as a basic principle ofall socio-productive relationships, management of the self as self-entrepreneur, financialization of one’s own life, imposition of a security state that decides which lives are
liveable.”Making Visible the Invisible75
2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.
8.

9.

“[S]et of conditions, material and symbolic, that determine an uncertainty about sustained access to essential resources for the full development of a subject’s life.”“[S]tart from oneself, so as not to remain in oneself (as capital and patriarchy wouldlike); disobey the segmentations and borders of integrated global capitalism to be together and revolt; grasping the city-company as common and conflict terrain: situating oneself within and against (precariousness, forced mobility, unequal access toresources, exploitation, fear, loneliness…).”“The current Spanish novel reproduces, unconsciously (and perhaps very consciously,
when literary career, sales, fame, public recognition, etc., prevail over writing), theideology of advanced capitalism by displacing the radical contradictions of the system
by others that could be assumed by that ideology. The novel of non-ideology erases
the traces of the political and the social to offer an interpretation of reality in which
all conflict is located within the subject. This displacement of social tensions towards
subjective impulses contributes, by default, to the imaginary construction of a perfectand closed, unconflicted world. That is, the ‘End of History’.”“[A] social and geographically determined condition that is reflected, in a visible way(sometimes obscenely), in a multitude of work, educational, health, migratory, housing and salary situations, but also on a psychological, affective and symbolic level.”“[W]e must also keep very much in mind the precarity that makes it difficult to imagine, think and act coherently against precarity.”“[I]t makes collective identification possible and impossible at the same time.”“[I]t is not the antagonist of social reality, but, on the contrary, its pre-existing condition, its psychic glue.”“[W]ithout the hallucinatory theatre of self-representations and self-celebrations, without that ‘marvellous puppet show’ of progress in Iberian (post)modernity, the belleépoque of the new democratic Spain and its daily experience cannot be understood.”

10. “[I]f ever, upon arriving from the street, they look up and, when seeing the building,wonder how it was built, how men on scaffolding to plaster the façade endured thecold and rain; if they have ever given a single thought, no matter how small, to those
who toiled, tired, sweated, ached, and wore out their bodies to make possible thosewalls, that ceiling, that stairway, that elevator shaft where a bricklayer sometimes falls
down who will never be remembered with a plaque of gratitude at the entrance to thehouse; if it has even occurred to them to think that this building was made by men, it
wasn’t built by itself, it wasn’t machines or prefabricated modules, like those couples
who buy a flat and go every Sunday to see how the work progresses, and, since it is
not a work day, from one week to the next they see the house growing as if by itself.”
11. “Certainly, there are many narratives that take place totally or partially in workplaces,
but what these narratives relate is something that happens between the characters outside of their mere work activity, and not that activity as such, because its brutality or

76

Christian Cl aessonmonotony seem point out a limit to narrativity (how to tell something where there isno one, where everyone ceases to be someone?).”12. “Round, square, round, square, triangular, rectangular, triangular, rectangular, she
looks at the clock to see how many seconds it takes to take a box, fill it and put it in its
place, round, square, round, square, triangular, rectangular, triangular, rectangular.”
13. “Good afternoon, could I speak to Mr. Herrera Abad, please. Pleased to greet you, Mr.
Herrera. I call you to. No, it is not a telephone sale. No, I will not offer you any. Excuse
me, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, could I speak to Mr. Herrera Acosta, please. Pleased to greet you, Mr.
Herrera. I’m calling to ask for your. It will only be four minutes, Mr. Herrera. You don’t
have to. Excuse me, good afternoon.
Good afternoon, could I speak to Mr. Herrera Agudo, please.”
14. The term ‘Spanish’ refers to the language rather than to the country as a whole, since
there are a large number of novels published in Spain written in Catalan, Basque andGalician. A more accurate denomination would thus be “Spanish Post-Crisis Fictionin Spanish” but, for the sake of stylistic elegance, I use the conventional term. See myarticle “One Country, Several Literatures: Towards a Comparative Understanding ofContemporary Literature in Spain” (Claesson 2018a) and Novela política en la España
plurilingüe, a collection of edited essays that study post-crisis political fiction published in all the official languages of Spain (forthcoming in 2024).
15. “[P]recarity, always fictionalised from an intersectional and multi-scalar multi-perspectivism, becomes a privileged locus of enunciation from which it is possible to reply
to the hubris of the great supposedly anonymous meta-narrative of the crisis, defining
the mobilisation as proceeding from a territoriality in the form of ‘situated planetarity’.”
16. “[A] set that leans more and more towards the miscegenation of genres, languages andcommunicative planes, and that turns metaliterary reflection into a propositional andpropulsive space.”
17. “[T]he crisis, as a disruption of both personal and collective narratives, resulted in thesubjects’ inability to provide narrative continuity to their own story, to take hold of
the narrative.”
18. “[T]he way in which the devices of the State operate in the institutionalisation of thebodies of those who do not fit into normality and constructed heteronormativity.”
19. “[T]he strength of the weak, whose ingredients are the activation of affections and ties,
the autonomous choice of times and spaces, the value of equality and plurality.”
20. “[A]a guerrilla-movement: an ecosystem, a self-organised network, a world on the move.”
21. “[T]hat try to make visible issues derived from the economic, moral, social and political ruin that had been obscured by official discourse; that try to point out causes,
culprits and contradictions, or to imagine either solutions or alternative worlds.”

Making Visible the Invisible77

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PART 2PERSONALISING CLASS:INDIVIDUALS AND
COLLECTIVES2.1
The Poetics of Personal Authenticity
Diversity, Intersectionality and the Working Class inContemporary German Literature
Christoph Schaub

Diversity, Invisibility, Intersectionality
Over the last decade, literary, journalistic and sociological writing about classsociety and the working class has increased in Germany and gained broader
public visibility. Such writing has been triggered by, and given shape to, discussions about the precariat (Standing 2021) and the society of downward mobility(Nachtwey 2018). At the same time, it was influenced by Didier Eribon’s Retour
à Reims (Returning to Reims, 2009), translated into German in 2016 with a fieldforming impact. The rise of this writing appears to be as much a symptom ofneoliberalism’s “restoration of class power” through “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2007, 31; 159) as it is an intellectual, artistic and political response
to it. As I argue, the entanglement of the representation of the working class as adiverse group with a poetics of personal authenticity predominates in this strandof contemporary literature.
In recent publications, sociological and journalistic authors often highlight
two characteristics of the working class, understanding it as the majority ofthe population who do not possess capital and have to sell their labour power,
yet are increasingly unable to live off what they make. Authors emphasise theworking class’s diversity. The sociologists Nicole Mayer-Ahuja and Oliver Nacht­wey (2021), for example, argue that “the labouring class […] is everything but
homogenous”; they contend that it has encompassed “very different persons
since the beginning of capitalism” and has done so “despite its romantic reduction [Engführung] to the industrial proletariat” (30–31).1 These new conceptions foreground a working class not limited to, nor even centred on, the whitemale worker in the factory, in mining or construction; instead it encompasses,
to name only a few examples, care workers of all kinds, delivery and service

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Christoph Schaub

personnel, and workers in the gig economy. The diversity of the working classstems both from the multiplicity of professional occupations (and their various
legal frameworks and educational backgrounds) and from the heterogeneity ofworking-class social positions and identities, which are best understood throughan intersectional lens that demonstrates how class is connected to, for example,
gender, ethnicity and citizenship.
If authors stress diversity, they also emphasise the absence of self-representations by working-class subjects in the public sphere. Writing of the “unheard
half,” journalist Julia Friedrichs (2021) contends, in her book-length reportage
Working Class, that the “voices” of the working class “are much too rarely heard”(17). Similar to Friedrich, Mayer-Ahuja and Nachtwey (2021) see the interviewbased reportages they collect in their edited volume as a way to make workingclass people “visible” and enable them to “report with their own voices about
their work and their lives” (14). These books tend to arrange working-class firstperson utterances within the authors’ larger interpretative narratives. In contrast,
Frédéric Valin, an author and care worker, does without such a framework toforeground the voices of the care workers he interviews in his Pflegeprotokolle(Care Protocols, 2021), a title that evokes Erika Runge’s famous Bottroper Protokolle (1968) and points back to earlier writing about class society. All thesepublications register the need for different kinds of representations of workers,
both in terms of how they are represented and who represents them.
Against the background of the long history of imaginaries of the working
class, diverse self-representations of different working-class subjects seem to be
relevant for at least two reasons (see also Nilsson in this volume). First, they
complicate the homogenisation of the working class in parts of the labour movement: an operation that constructed a homogenous class position as the basis fora revolutionary subject to emerge and that was driven by “the telos of a unified
working class” (Jay 2013, 390). Second, and more relevant today, self-representations of different working-class subjects counter classism—that is, the homogenising, othering and pejorative depiction of the working class that is entangledwith the political, economic, cultural and social discrimination and subjugationof working-class subjects (Kemper and Weinbach 2020, 13–25). The new writing
about the working class in Germany thus resonates with important concerns ofcertain strands within intersectional studies and politics: that is, the attempt tomake visible groups and individuals not intelligible in the public sphere and todeconstruct generalising and othering representations of marginalised groups
and individuals (Meyer 2017, 72–78), the latter point being a major concern ofanti-categorical approaches in particular. However, this writing also addresses
a relative blind spot in intersectionality studies itself, as such scholarship andpolitics have generally paid little attention to class by comparison with gender

The Poetics of Personal Authenticity85

or race (hooks 2000). In contrast to earlier phases of politicised writing about
the working class in (West) German literary history—such as the 1920/30s and1960/70s—contemporary German literature proceeds in an emphatically intersectional way in order to represent the working class as a diverse group. In thisregard, the new literature about class society is the result not only of discussions
about socio-economic precarity, but also of the heightened visibility of Germany’s post-migrant condition, and of debates about cultural diversity.

Didier Eribon and Personal Authenticity
For my argument, one more layer needs to be added. It relates more directly tothe literary field. In contemporary German literature, texts about class that employ modes of autosociobiographical, autobiographical and autofictional writing
predominate. In a retrospective manner, they often tell the upward mobility of aprotagonist of working-class origin who is also the autodiegetic narrator. They
include Daniela Dröscher’s autosociobiography Zeige deine Klasse (Show yourClass, 2018), autobiographical testimonies like Christian Baron’s Ein Mann seiner Klasse (A Man of his Class, 2020) and Olivier David’s Keine Aufstiegsgeschichte(Not a Story of Upward Mobility, 2022), and autofictional, or autobiographically
influenced, novels such as Deniz Ohde’s Streulicht (Scattered Light, 2020). That
these particular modes of writing are so prevalent can be traced back, at least to
some extent, to the success of the German publication of Eribon’s Retour à Reims
in 2016, in which the French sociologist returned home to explore his social
origins in the working class by mixing sociological and autobiographical methods and forms of representation.2 That Retour à Reims was able to have such afield-forming influence must also be seen in terms of an absence: older Germanlanguage texts written in the autofictional mode about class and upward mobility—such as Gerhard Zwerenz’s Kopf und Bauch. Die Geschichte eines Arbeiters,
der unter die Intellektuellen fiel (Head and Stomach. The Story of a Worker who
ended up among the Intellectuals, 1971) and Karin Struck’s Klassenliebe (Class
Love, 1973)—did not have an influence on contemporary writing, somethingthat seems to reflect a break in the (literary) discourse about class between the
1970s and now (Schaub 2020).
Various writers and critics, including Christian Baron (Schuhen 2020, 59),
Daniela Dröscher (2020, 20–21), Anna Mayr (2020, 21–24) and Leander Scholz(2019, 127–129), have attested that Eribon’s text triggered a broader discourse
about class society, helped to position class topics in the literary field, and alsoheightened their own attention to issues of class and social origin; Eribon’s
autosociobiography is even briefly discussed in Bov Bjerg’s novel Serpentinen

86

Christoph Schaub(2020, 100–111; Winding Road). Assessments of Eribon differ, however. While
Dröscher (2018), who grew up in the middle class, celebrates Eribon as someone who “has opened a door” and made it possible to “talk again about social
distinctions” (21), Mayr (2020), the daughter of unemployed parents, sees his
influence more ambivalently, considering some of the publications that have followed in his vein as “bordering on social pornography” (24), which likely reflects a distancing between authors and the milieu of their social origin as wellas possibly classist expectations in the targeted non-proletarian readership. Still,with respect to the German literary field, there can be little doubt about Eribon’s
field-forming impact (Schuhen 2020). His book had a “genre-forming function”
since it paved the way for texts that “negotiate working-class origins in the formof an autobiographical narration and with attention to social conditions, andthat approach these origins by way of a retrospective return and through the actof writing” (Ernst 2020, 79).
Retour à Reims would appear to provide an attractive model for representing
a diverse working class for two reasons. First, although he does not use this term,
Eribon looks at his social origins through a kind of intersectional lens, tracing
the entanglement of class, gender and sexuality. His negotiation of class thus
connects easily to public debates about social justice that have been increasingly
dominated by questions of recognition, identity and diversity (Fraser 2003, 16).
At the same time, his book resonates with burgeoning discussions about socioeconomic inequality and redistribution.
Second, while Eribon’s text makes use of sociological analysis, it also relies
on an autobiographical narrative that contributes to the creation of knowledge
about the working class. In this mode of writing that revolves around an individual, the analysis of society and the analysis of the self proceed simultaneously.
The knowledge that it produces is not only legitimated—i.e. understood by thereading public as true and accurate—due to the use of sociological methods,
but also because of the author’s personal authenticity. I follow the philosopher
Sybille Krämer (2012) in distinguishing ‘material authenticity’ from ‘personalauthenticity’ as two ways through which authenticity is culturally constructed,
or staged. While the former refers to the “property of a product whose creatorcannot be identified” and is in the first place a descriptive term, the latter, a normative term, designates “the ‘realness’ [Echtheit] and credibility of a person. Thiskind of authenticity refers to the capacity for human beings to be genuine andtruthful” (16). In other words, in the field of literature, both the personality andthe social identity of an author, as entangled with each other, can be strategically
employed to construct ‘the truth’ of what this author articulates about society
and politics. Obviously, this is a connection between an artwork and authenticity
that needs to be distinguished, for example, from the rather material authenticity

The Poetics of Personal Authenticity87of the work of art in Theodor W. Adorno’s sense (Butler 2019, 270–271). Personalauthenticity is a particularly useful concept with respect to the German literary
field, where a specific discourse about autofiction now predominates. According
to this discourse, “the subject of the autofiction intersects with the author andis thus grounded in the author’s social position whereby the credibility of whatis written is guaranteed without having to rely on facticity” (Ernst 2020, 78). To
put it somewhat differently: a widespread expectation of the literary public isthat the identity of the author authenticates what is related in the text, and thisextends even beyond works of autofiction (Baßler 2022, 182–197). In recent German-language literary history, this is however only one available way of dealing
with the intersection of autofiction and authenticity. In contrast, in the so-called
pop-literature of the 1990s, autofictional modes of writing and the authors’ related self-fashioning beyond their texts were emphatically used to deconstructnotions of authenticity (Butler 2019; Kreknin 2019), something influenced bypost-structuralist thought and more recently again exemplified in Christian
Kracht’s Eurotrash (2021). With respect to my corpus of texts, the notion of personal authenticity is significant because contemporary writing about class often
strategically employs personal authenticity, but rarely, I would contend, metapoetically reflects or problematises it. The personal is then itself a category thathas been mobilised in recent literature and its discourse about the working class,and particularly so since the personal, in the vein of Eribon, is understood andrepresented as socially co-formed. Moreover, the concept is important to theunderstanding of German writing after Eribon as this literature largely dispenses
with a more formally sociological dimension and foregrounds individual andautobiographical narratives even more. It is necessary to engage the categoryof the personal and the poetical and political strategies of personal authenticity
because they are characteristic of the ways many authors write about class today.
In literary representations of the working class as a diverse group, I argue,
the poetics of personal authenticity, which to varying extents undergirds modesof autofictional, autobiographical and autosociobiographical writing, is particularly powerful because it serves a dual function: by its force, these texts represent
the diversity of the working class as one of heterogeneous, interrelated sociocultural groups—one (or more) of which the socially formed autodiegetic narrator/author stands in for. At the same time, it allows these texts to represent
working-class diversity as a plethora of different, singular individuals. Becauseof this dual function, the poetics of authenticity can tie in with different strands
in the discourse about diversity as authors use it to re-imagine the working class.
In the following two sections, I discuss my arguments first with regard to ananthology of short autobiographical texts and then an autofictional novel, before
closing with a critique of this trend in contemporary German literature.

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Assembling a Plurality of Voices: The Medium of the
Anthology
Published in 2021, the anthology Klasse und Kampf (Class and Struggle) gathers texts by contemporary authors about class society and the working class.
The editors, Maria Barankow and Christian Baron, who has a working-classbackground, are well positioned to influence the literary and political debate:
Barankow is an editorial director at the Ullstein publishing house and Baron, theauthor of the testimonial mentioned above, is a prominent journalist writing frequently about social inequality in leftist and left-liberal media such as the daily
Neues Deutschland and the weekly Der Freitag. Separating the much more common compound noun Klassenkampf (class struggle), the anthology’s title evokes
labour movement politics and at the same time signals a distancing from it. Realistically, the editors contend that “the revolution is not imminent” and advocate
for a social transformation “by little steps,” which they consider to be most likely
to lead to “a better world” (Barankow and Baron 2021, 11–12).
Barankow and Baron draw on feminist critic bell hooks and feminist-Marxist
philosopher Frigga Haug, as well as sociologists Nachtwey and Andreas Reckwitz, toposition their book as a collection of texts that explores “the contradiction between
capital and labor” (ibid., 8) under the conditions of social and cultural pluralisationand through an intersectional perspective. Taking the plurality of German society
into account, their book is meant to give voice to fourteen “different perspectives,
backgrounds, and ways of storytelling” (ibid., 10). They write: “Die hier versammelten Stimmen sind so vielfältig wie unsere Gesellschaft”3 (ibid.). Consequently,
the anthology features texts by Afro-German, Black British and Turkish-German
authors alongside those by white contributors, and it includes writers from the Eastand the West of the country: Bov Bjerg, Kübra Gümüşay, Clemens Meyer, Katja
Oskamp, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Anke Stelling and Olivia Wenzel are among thecontributors. Barankow and Baron’s anthology testifies to a new literary discourse
about class that is fundamentally marked by debates about cultural diversity.
More than simply surveying this corpus of literature, however, Klasse undKampf contributes performatively to the formation of a new writing about classthat revolves in multi-dimensional ways around the question of class inequality.
The anthology explores class inequality’s entanglement with social and cultural
pluralisation in post-migrant Germany and promotes literature that contributes tothis project. Since the anthology moreover functions as a genre that collects andcombines diverse texts and authorial voices into a single publication to constructa polyphonic expression decentred from any individual authorship, the anthology
accomplishes something that mostly escapes texts employing autofictional, autobiographical and autosociographical modes in isolation. Klasse und Kampf provides

The Poetics of Personal Authenticity89

one possible formal answer to the question of how first-person narratives revolving around the biography of an individual can be used to enact a collective engagement with class society (Spoerhase 2017, 37) and how they may represent a diverseand polyphonic collective: such narratives can be assembled into a juxtaposition ofvoices that resonate with each other without becoming a single, uniform utterance.
Yet the editors express an uneasy relation to their anthology’s potential rolein the formation of a literary and political movement. They write: “Der von
uns gewählte Titel Klasse und Kampf verspricht auf den ersten Blick eine Programmschrift, ein Manifest, eine Anklage. All das ist diese Anthologie nicht, unddas ist sie irgendwie doch”4 (Barankow and Baron 2021, 10). They moreover explain that neither the anthology nor any of its authors employ a logic of political or socio-cultural representation: “sie machen sich nicht zum Sprachrohr einer
Gruppe, einer politischen Partei oder Strömung”5 (ibid.; see also Frank 2021, 29).
While the question of how any kind of organised political agency may result fromthis project remains unaddressed, it is at this point in the anthology’s foreword
that the poetics of personal authenticity finds an explicit, almost programmatic
expression: “Wir wollen durch persönliche Perspektiven die Misstände greifbar
machen und damit eine Einladung zur Empathie aussprechen”6 (ibid.). The poetics of personal authenticity is supposed to help transform the experiential and affective foundation from which political acts may subsequently emerge. The forceof personal authenticity, as a poetics that grounds stories about social origins in
the working class, lies in the way that it makes social conditions more relatable to
the reader because they are spoken about in personal and concrete terms by the
person who has experienced them, rather than relying on a form of narration that
abstracts from personal experience, a point that Otoo (2021) makes: “Bei […]strukturellen Diskriminierungen ist es […] so, dass Menschen viel besser in derLage sind, einen Sachverhalt kognitiv zu erfassen, wenn er über eine persönliche
Erzählung erklärt wird”7 (123). Yet the prevalence of this poetics may simultaneously be read as the symptom of a lack of collective (literary) politics in the present.
In the anthology, authors mobilise personal authenticity and their individuallife stories to counter stereotypical and generalising understandings of the working class and to produce non-hegemonic knowledge about it. Several authors
position the stories of their social origin to complicate generalising terms such as‘the worker,’ which do not capture their precarious and specific socio-economic
and cultural experiences. For example, Francis Seeck (2021), an anti-discrimination activist, author and academic, who was the child of educated, and politicallycommitted but poor parents, writes:
Ich bezeichne meinen Klassenhintergrund als Armutsklasse. Wir waren reichan Bildung und arm an Einkommen und gesellschaftlicher Anerkennung. Die

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Christoph Schaub
Gruppe der Menschen, die in materieller Armut leben, ist divers […] Die Realitäten meiner Herkunftsklasse lassen sämtliche Klischees über “die Hartz-IVBezieher”8 oder die “die Arbeiter” scheitern.9 (68)

Contributors position themselves against those who “romanticise” the “so-calledworking class” (Becker 2021, 151): “Was sollen wir romantisieren? In unserem
Viertel kursierte auch das Elend. Vor der Wende, nach der Wende. Trinker,
Kranke, Verwahrloste, Schrottsammler […]” (Meyer 2021, 177).10 Consequently, authors emphasise individual life stories and experiences that do not fit neatly
into prevalent stereotypes. Many contributors also describe their precarious occupations as writers and workers in the cultural field in terms of class. Their“personal experiences” provide, as Otoo (2021) argues, a knowledge that is not
captured in statistics and does not “fit into [existing] theories” (123; 113). In
Klasse und Kampf, the poetics of personal authenticity works toward the creationof anti-hegemonic knowledge about a diverse working class, even to the extent
that the usefulness of the term itself is put into question.
“Augenhöhe” (“Eye to Eye”), the contribution by Pinar Karabulut, exemplifies how personal authenticity functions in the anthology to represent diversity
both in terms of socio-cultural groups and individuals. Karabulut grew up as thedaughter of a Turkish immigrant, a so-called guest-worker (Gastarbeiter). Nowa member of the artistic direction of the theatre Münchner Kammerspiele, shebelongs, in her own words, to “the classical middle class of Germany” (Karabulut 2021, 83). On her text’s fourteen pages, she relates her parents’ life story—
specifically her father’s—and her own as a shared, but different, story. It is thestory of two different kinds of upward mobility through labour and education,
respectively, and it is the story of an intergenerationally shared “invisibility in
the German mainstream society [Mehrheitsgesellschaft]” (ibid., 90). In her text,
which combines essayistic passages, autobiographical episodes and her parents’memories, the poetics of personal authenticity and the mode of autobiographicalwriting have a self-reflexively counter-hegemonic impetus: “Während es Menschen der Mehrheitsgesellschaft erlaubt ist, individuelle Biografien zu besitzen,
bleibt dies Menschen mit sogenanntem Migrationshintergrund verwehrt. Unsere Funktion scheint als Pars pro Toto für eine Gruppe zu dienen”11 (ibid., 83).
By employing an autobiographical narrative and thereby stressing individuality,
the text’s form itself challenges the boundaries of who is allowed to have a publicly visible individual story.
By complicating a mere politics of representation, as well as the idea of sociocultural embodiment alluded to in the phrasing pars pro toto, Karabulut understands and tells her father’s life story in a twofold sense. Her father’s life both
exemplifies what is typical for someone from his socio-cultural background andThe Poetics of Personal Authenticity91

exhibits something so particular and extraordinary that it can only be captured
by comparing it to cinema: “Auf der einen Seite ist die Biografie meines Vaters
eine sehr klassische und gewöhnliche Gastarbeiter-Biografie. Auf der anderen
Seite muss ich oft an Catch Me If You Can denken—leider ohne Leonardo DiCaprio und ohne Flugzeuge”12 (ibid., 84). Karabulut describes the dehumanising
practices Turkish guest-workers were subjected to and that culminated, during
the recruitment process, in the de-individualising temporary assignation of anumber for a name (ibid., 86). But she also highlights the inventiveness of her
father and his various tricks to get jobs and advance, working in a bank for twenty-four years and eventually achieving an elevated standing in the local TurkishGerman community. Narrating her father’s story, Karabulut emphasises bothwhat she considers typical for his migrant worker story and aspects where his
individual character stands out. But Karabulut’s intervention stresses individuality most, as she considers it the dimension largely neglected in many hegemonic
representations of (working-class) migration and post-migrant society: “Wie sollein einzelner Mensch […] die komplette Migrationsgeschichte Deutschlands
verkörpern können?! Die Schönheit jedes Menschen liegt in ihrer oder seiner
Individualität—und somit auch in diesen individuellen Geschichten”13 (ibid.,
83–84). In “Augenhöhe,” as elsewhere in Klasse und Kampf, the narrative andconceptual foregrounding of the individual works to further pluralise the representation of a working class seen through an intersectional lens.

Intersectional Invisibility, the Working Class and the
Autofictional Novel
In her debut novel Streulicht (Scattered Light), published and shortlisted for theprestigious Deutscher Buchpreis in 2020, Deniz Ohde relies much less on the
poetics of personal authenticity than the contributors of Klasse und Kampf or theauthors of aforementioned books such as Zeige deine Klasse and Ein Mann seiner
Klasse. On the one hand, this is an effect of genre as the text is peritextually designated a novel and framed as a work of fiction. On the other hand, it relates tothe novel’s epitexts. In interviews, Ohde has emphasised repeatedly that she does
not understand her novel as autobiographical, pointing out differences between
herself and the narrator (Walter 2021). Yet she also acknowledges similarities
between the narrator’s and her own socio-cultural and family backgrounds andtheir different, but resonant stories of upward mobility (Gerk 2020). The novel
moreover includes signals of an autofictional dimension. The age of the author
and narrator are close enough, as is their mixed-ethnic/national parental lineage (author: Turkish father, German mother; narrator: German father, Turkish

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Christoph Schaubmother); and while the town in the novel remains unnamed, it can be easily
reconstructed as Frankfurt-Sindlingen, where Ohde grew up.
For these reasons, Streulicht can be understood as autofictional in the expanded sense explained above, even if there is no nominal identification of author
and narrator. The author’s socio-cultural position, social origin and biographicalexperience inform the extent to which the knowledge about class society that
her novel produces is perceived as plausible by reading audiences that situate
the novel within the dominant current of contemporary autofictional writing.
While the novel invites such a reception, it simultaneously presents itself as a
fictional work not to be easily identified with its author’s biography. It is this tension that distinguishes Ohde’s novel from texts by Baron or Dröscher. Yet Retour
à Reims and Streulicht also share a structural similarity: an autodiegetic narrator
explores her social origins through the chronotope of a return home. Streulicht
then exists in the literary forcefield of a poetics of personal authenticity that isintertwined with the representation of a diverse working class and that makes it
possible for an autofictional, or at least autobiographically influenced, novel tobe understood as providing knowledge about contemporary class society that isgrounded in, and authenticated through, the personal experience of the author.
Born in the late 1980s, the nameless first-person narrator grows up in aplace dominated by an industrial park. In one of its factories, her German father “dipped aluminum sheets into lye [Laugen] for forty years, for forty hours
a week” (Ohde 2020, 11). In her eyes, he has a “working-class pride” and shows“helplessness with regard to everything that goes beyond his immediate environment” (ibid.). For him, higher education is coded as foreign, something thenarrator internalises (ibid., 84; 155). Driven by longing, her mother left Turkey to join her sister in Frankfurt and there started to work as a cleaner (ibid.,
107–112). For the narrator, her mother, who temporarily leaves her husband
without taking her daughter, remains as problematic as her father: “Nie war es
ihr darum gegangen, mich zu beschützen. Nie war es ihr darum gegangen, mirdiese Unabhängigkeit vorzuleben, die sie erfasst hatte, als sie mit zehn oder elf
Jahren heimlich Schweinefleisch aß”14 (ibid., 229) The parents are of little help
to their daughter in understanding their family history as they rarely share theirmemories (ibid., 90; 109). The narrator thematises an unwillingness, or inability,of her working-class family members to tell their own history, or at least shareit with their daughter, something the narrator overcomes by finding her own
voice through narrating her life story (ibid., 165; 251–254). Both the retrospective form of narration and the changing position of the narrator between theclasses leads to a multiplicity of perspectives in the novel. Kyung-Ho Cha (2023)
has convincingly distinguished three points of view: “first, there is the perspective of the protagonist as a child and teenager who experiences social and racial

The Poetics of Personal Authenticity93

discrimination, the nature of which she does not understand. Second, there is
the perspective of the protagonist as narrator, who remembers and analyses her
younger self ” (142) and who looks at her parents like an “ethnographer” (ibid.,139). Finally, there is a third perspective that “is implied in the text and belongs
to the reader” (ibid., 142). It shows the father as an “active and caring person,”something that the narrator cannot recognise (ibid., 142). If only marginally, thenovel thus implies a critique of the narrator’s in some regards limited perspective
on her working-class origins.
Overall, the novel depicts contours of a working class in Germany that ischaracterised by transnational connections and includes workers in standard
employment and in more precarious jobs. Streulicht does so without romanticising this class as it tells a family history marked by unresolved trauma, intrafamilial violence and an anxiety to go beyond what one is used to. The samede-romanticising impulse goes for the novel’s story of upward mobility as well.
Although the narrator manages to move beyond the educational background ofher working-class parents and graduates from university, her financial and professional situation remains precarious throughout (Ohde 2020, 267–272; 284).
She also continuously experiences shame and feelings of in-betweenness, bothof which Chantal Jaquet (2018) has identified as characteristic of the figure of
the transclass. Ohde’s nameless narrator is one of many examples of this figure incontemporary German literature.
With respect to a social position that is constituted by the intersection of class,gender and ethnicity, Streulicht explores what theorists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Gudrun Axeli-Knapp term ‘intersectional invisibility’ (Axeli-Knapp2013). On one level, the term intersectional invisibility criticises the lack of alanguage or communal space for addressing the various elements of the narrator’s marginalised experience. Worried about German racism, her mother, forexample, tells her that she is a “German” (Ohde 2020, 49) and could not be thetarget of racist language after the narrator was confronted with racist (and classist) slurs in school (ibid., 48). At the same time, intersectional invisibility refers to how the norms that make possible such othering remain invisible. The
narrator’s best friends in childhood and youth, Sophia and Pikka, embody thewhite middle-class norm so self-evident and naturalised that it determines any
interactions, choices and feelings, constituting “an invisible wall” (ibid., 22) that
separates the narrator from the mainstream society of her town (ibid., 38–42). By
retrospectively telling her story, the narrator lays bare this norm, makes legibleintersectional invisibility, and shows how it leads to feelings of shame.
If the novel explores the invisibility of intersectional working-class positions,
it also stages itself as a counter-representation. This aspect is foregrounded, on
a more individual level, when, in one episode, the narrator steals a file with her

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name from school, implicitly challenging the state’s way of defining who she is(ibid., 177–179). The issue of how the working class is represented is broachedmore generally when the narrator discusses the depiction of precarious and stigmatised working-class people in a TV documentary that makes abundant useof stereotypical images and that the narrator relates to her own experience, anexperience that differs from the milieu shown on TV (ibid., 135–138). Late in thenovel, moreover, the narrator tells how her father buys two copies of a chronicle of their town. In that book, her friend Pikka’s family is depicted because his
grandfather worked as a manager of a local company (ibid., 209–211). Her own
family is absent; they do not belong to the officially recorded history of theirhome. In the individual form that the poetics of personal authenticity demandsof contemporary writing about class, the narrator’s story can be read as an intradiegetic counter-history of her town. At the same time, and due to its play withthe autofictional mode, the author’s novel functions, to some extent at least, asa possible and plausible counter-history of places like Frankfurt-Sindlingen that
foregrounds the diversity of the working class.

The Politics of the Poetics of Personal Authenticity
Streulicht is invested in a poetics that aims at making visible what is not intelligible in the public sphere. The novel functions as a kind of counter-representationthat attempts to create awareness for social problems and maybe even tries tointervene in political debates through literary means. While Ohde appears to
see her novel in this way, she consciously refrains from using a vocabulary morecharacteristic of political debate. As she explains, her novel is supposed to workthrough the affects and the empathy of her readers: “Ich habe diese Begriffe Rassismus oder Chancengleichheit nicht verwendet, weil das abstrakte Begriffe sindund nicht besonders literarische. Mir war wichtig, diese Begriffe erlebbar zu
machen. Also was sie bedeuten in einer Biografie und wie die sich anfühlen”15(Romanowsky 2022). In this respect, Ohde’s understanding of the political, or atleast educational, use of literature meets that of the editors and contributors ofKlasse und Kampf. To a varying extent, all of these authors seem to agree that, as
Otoo (2021) puts it, “people are much better able to cognitively comprehend anissue [structural discrimination] if it is related through a personal story” (123);and this appears to be a far cry from a Brechtian aesthetics of defamiliarisationand its argument against empathy in the critical reception of art. Indeed, the relative popularity of such texts as Streulicht, Ein Mann seiner Klasse or Serpentinen
indicates that the personal is a way of narrating class society that resonates, I
would argue, with people under historical conditions characterised by the in-

The Poetics of Personal Authenticity95

creasing cultural, social and political importance of subjective ways of life, authentic personal experience, cultural recognition and identity politics since the1970s (Nachtwey 2018, 184–189). The fact that recent writing about the working
class incorporates and foregrounds such issues appears to be one condition forthe success it has had in enabling a new literary discourse about class society.
The understanding that Ohde, Barankow and Baron, Otoo and others appear
to share of how to spark through literature the creation of aware, even political,
subjects can partially account for why the poetics of personal authenticity is one
preferred means of treating class among contemporary authors.16 Besides otherpossible explanations that concern genre, the prevalence of such ideas about
literature and subject formation also illuminates the relative absence in many
examples of this kind of literature of the necessarily abstract level of sociologicalanalysis that was so characteristic of Retour à Reims. In Eribon’s text, the sociological and theoretical dimensions serve as a way to complement, confirm,correct, theorise and make more objective the subjective experience of an individual. This approach contributes to creating knowledge about class society thatis more multifaceted—both in terms of the methods of knowledge production
and the forms of representation—than what we encounter in the literary writingthat was triggered by the German translation of Retour à Reims.
The problem of the place of theory in such literature relates also to the question of how class is thematised in these texts. In this writing, class appears overwhelmingly as an issue of recognition and democratic participation—who is represented and in what way? Who is allowed to participate in society, culture andpolitics?—and also as an issue of redistribution and socio-economic equality,
such as demands for a fairer distribution of social wealth, equal access to education, better working and less precarious living conditions, etc. Yet what is largely
absent from this literature is a thematisation of class in the context of a critiqueof capitalism as “an institutionalized societal order” (Fraser 2022, 19). This would
be a systemic critique that went beyond questions of recognition and redistribution to engage with such issues as the mode of production, exploitation, the commodity form, systemic crisis or impersonal rule that have long occupied Marxist
theorists (Fraser 2003, 20). On the one hand, this may be too much to ask ofa burgeoning literature about class society in the first place.17 On the other, it
seems relevant to point out that a form of literary writing concerned with making class society palpable and understandable through personal experience andin the form of first-person narratives may likely have its epistemic and representational limitations with respect to those levels of capitalist society that are only
accessible through abstraction and theory (see also Spoerhase 2017, 36–37).
Yet with respect to debates about diversity in a post-migrant and increasingly
more class-aware German society, the poetics of personal authenticity serves as a

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powerful foundation for literary intervention because it ties in simultaneously withtwo paradigms in the discourse of diversity. In a study on the history of the term,
Georg Toepfer (2020) demonstrates that diversity encompasses the “paradigm ofself-fulfilment [Selbstentfaltungsparadigma]” that foregrounds “the individual andthe actualization of their authentic, in each case specific, desires and characteristics.” The second paradigm the term diversity relates to is the “paradigm of justice,”that is, the “recognition of social heterogeneity as an integral moment of modern
societies,” which entails the political demand that such heterogeneity needs to be
represented in social institutions (139; 140–141). To the extent that new writing
about class narrates intersectional working-class stories as simultaneously sociallyformed and typical as well as individual and personal, it articulates both paradigms. It does so through a poetics of personal authenticity that authors mobilise
to legitimate their claims about class society and their demands for recognition,
justice and equality for both the individuals and the socio-cultural groups thatthese individuals may not embody, but nevertheless belong to.
Because the collective dimension of the individual experience is also always
explored in these writings, these texts point beyond an exclusive “emancipationof the individual” (Spoerhase 2017, 36) and simultaneously address “collective
problems and solutions” (ibid., 37). They do so, even if they do not foregroundthis aspect, and may not be able to, because they revolve around the upward mobility of an autodiegetic narrator. Read individually and as an emerging corpus,
these texts appear to articulate the desire of people socialised in the working
class to move out of a subordinated socio-cultural position. They put centre stage
their aspiration to make their own the economic, social and cultural resourcesand opportunities that hegemonic social groups and the existing class structure
do not allow working-class subjects to possess: such as being a legitimate voicein the public sphere, something that the people of the “unheard half ” (Friedrichs
2021, 17) are denied both as individuals and as parts of a social group.

Notes
1.
2.

3.

Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German are mine.
A major reason for the success of Eribon’s book was that its publication coincidedwith questions about the role of the working class and of growing social inequality
in the context of the ascendancy of the Alternative für Deutschland party, Brexit andthe election of Donald Trump. These questions occupied the German public in 2016,
and Eribon appeared as someone who had already addressed them with respect to the
French working class and the Front National.
“The voices collected here are as diverse as our society is.”The Poetics of Personal Authenticity97“Our title Class and Struggle appears to promise a programme, a manifesto, an accusation. This anthology is none of that, and somehow it is still all of it.”
5. “[T]hey do not make themselves the megaphone of a group, a political party, or a current.”
6. “We want to use personal perspectives to make grievances palpable and invite empathy.”
7. “With respect to structural discrimination it is the case that people are much better
able to cognitively comprehend an issue if it is related through a personal story.”
8. Between 2005 and 2022, the lower of two tiers of unemployment benefits was called Hartz
IV, or Arbeitslosengeld II; it was subsequently renamed Bürgergeld, or ‘citizen’s money.’
9. “I refer to my class background as poverty class. We were rich in education and poorin income and social recognition. The group of people that lives in material poverty isdiverse […] The reality of my class of origin proves wrong all the clichés about people
on Hartz IV and ‘the workers’.”
10. “What is there to romanticise? There was also misery in our neighbourhood. Before
the fall of the wall, after the fall of the wall. Drunks, the sick [Kranke], the sociallyneglected [Verwahrloste], salvagers […].”
11. “While people from mainstream society are allowed to have individual biographies,
people with a so-called migration background are denied one. Our function seems to
be to serve as a pars pro toto for a group.”
12. “On the one hand, my father’s biography is a very classical and ordinary guestworkerbiography. On the other, it often reminds me of Catch Me If You Can—unfortunately
without Leonardo DiCaprio and airplanes.”
13. “How is a single human being […] supposed to embody all of Germany’s migration
history?! The beauty of every human being lies in their individuality—and therefore
also in their individual stories.”
14. “For her, it was never about protecting me. Never about exemplifying to me the kind4.

of independence that made her secretly eat pork when she was ten or eleven years old.”
15. “I did not use the terms ‘racism’ or ‘equal opportunity’ [in the novel] because these

are abstract and not particularly literary terms. It was important to me to make theseterms palpable. And what they mean for a biography and how they feel.”
16. Of course, my argument would need to be differentiated in more detail with respect tothe specific poetics developed by each of these authors.
17. Still, it is worth pointing out that the lack of a systemic critique that goes beyond recognition and redistribution may be a symptomatic absence in a context where debates
about intersectionality have influenced a lot of the recent writing about class and diversity. Due to the importance of the category of identity, among other factors, intersectional approaches appear to have limitations with respect to theorising the social beyond discriminations of, and inequalities between, different socio-cultural groups andthus remain largely uninterested in how social groups, such as classes, are positioned according to functional relations or through impersonal forms of social organisation thatare necessary for production and reproduction in capitalist societies; see Soiland 2008.

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Christoph Schaub

References
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Barankow, Maria, and Christian Baron. 2021. “Vorwort.” In Klasse und Kampf, edited by
Maria Barankow and Christian Baron, 7–12. Berlin: Claassen.
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Baßler and Eckhard Schuhmacher, 267–282. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Cha, Kyung-Ho. 2023. “The Postmigrant Critique of the Bildungsroman and the Epistemic Injustice of the Education System in Deniz Ohde’s Scattered Light.” In Epistemic
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Ernst, Christina. 2020. “‘Arbeiterkinderliteratur’ nach Eribon: Autosoziobiographie in derdeutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur.” Lendemains 180: 77–91.
Frank, Arno. “Bremsklotz.” In Klasse und Kampf, edited by Maria Barankow and Christian Baron, 13–31. Berlin: Claassen.
Fraser, Nancy. 2003. “Soziale Gerechtigkeit im Zeitalter der Identitätspolitik: Umverteilung, Anerkennung und Beteiligung.” In Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, Umverteilung oder Anerkennung? Eine politisch-philosophische Kontroverse, 13–128. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Fraser, Nancy. 2022. Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care,and the Planet—and What We Can Do about It. London, New York: Verso.
Friedrichs, Julia. 2021. Working Class: Warum wir Arbeit brauchen, von der wir leben können. 2nd ed. Berlin, Munich: Berlin Verlag.
Gerk, Andrea. 2020. “Industriepark als Heimat: Deniz Ohde über Streulicht.” Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 16 October 2020. Accessed 14 April 2023. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/deniz-ohde-ueber-streulicht-industriepark-als-heimat-100.html.
Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
hooks, bell. 2000. Where we Stand: Class Matters. New York, London: Routledge.

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Jaquet, Chantal. 2018. Zwischen den Klassen: Über die Nicht-Reproduktion sozialer Macht.
Mit einem Nachwort von Carlos Spoerhase. Translated by Horst Brühmann. Konstanz:
Konstanz University Press.
Jay, Martin. 2013. “The Weimar Left: Theory and Practice.” In Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy, edited by Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick, 377–393. Princeton,
Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Karabulut, Pinar. “Augenhöhe.” In Klasse und Kampf, edited by Maria Barankow andChristian Baron, 82–95. Berlin: Claassen.
Kemper, Andreas, and Heike Weinbach. (2007) 2020. Klassismus: Eine Einführung. 3rd ed.
Münster: UNRAST-Verlag.
Krämer, Sybille. 2012. “Zum Paradoxon von Zeugenschaft im Spannungsfeld von Personalität und Depersonalisierung: Ein Kommentar über Authentizität in fünf Thesen.”
In Renaissance der Authentizität? Über die neue Sehnsucht nach dem Ursprünglichen,edited by Michael Rössner and Heidemarie Uhl, 15–26. Bielefeld: transcript.
Kreknin, Innokentij. 2019. “Autofiktion.” In Handbuch Literatur & Pop, edited by Moritz
Baßler and Eckhard Schuhmacher, 199–213. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Mayer-Ahuja, Nicole, and Oliver Nachtwey. 2021. “Verkannte Leistungsträger:innen:
Berichte aus der Klassengesellschaft.” In Verkannte Leistungsträger:innen: Berichte aus
der Klassengesellschaft, edited by Nicole Mayer-Ahuja and Oliver Nachtwey, 11–44.
Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Mayr, Anna. 2020. Die Elenden: Warum unsere Gesellschaft Arbeitslose verachtet und sie
dennoch braucht. Berlin: Hanser.
Meyer, Clemens. 2021. “Antihelden.” In Klasse und Kampf, edited by Maria Barankow andChristian Baron, 175–185. Berlin: Claassen.
Meyer, Katrin. 2017. Theorien der Intersektionalität zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius.
Nachtwey, Oliver. (2016) 2018. Die Abstiegsgesellschaft: Über das Aufbegehren in der regressiven Moderne, 8th ed. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Ohde, Deniz. 2020. Streulicht. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Otoo, Sharon Dodua. 2021. “Klassensprecher.” In Klasse und Kampf, edited by Maria
Barankow and Christian Baron, 109–124. Berlin: Claassen.
Romanowsky, Hanna. 2022. “Deniz Ohdes Roman Streulicht: Wie bestimmt Herkunft
unseren Bidungsweg?” MDR Kultur, 22 July 2022. Accessed 14 April 2023. https://www.mdr.de/kultur/literatur/deniz-ohde-leipzig-interview-ich-wollte-schon-immerschriftstellerin-sein-100.html.
Schaub, Christoph. 2020. “Autosoziobiografisches und autofiktionales Schreiben überKlasse in Didier Eribons Retour à Reims, Daniela Dröschers Zeige deine Klasse und
Karin Strucks Klassenliebe.” Lendemains 180: 64–76.
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Soiland, Tove. 2008. “Die Verhältnisse gingen und die Kategorien kamen. Intersectionality oder Vom Unbehagen an der amerikanischen Theorie.” querelles-net 26. Accessed
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https://jungle.world/artikel/2021/05/die-wurmfortsaetze-des-fordismus.

2.2
Narrating the Precariat
Social Wounds in Terézia Mora’s andWilhelm Genazino’s Novels
Olaf Berwald

Introduction
This contribution examines how the nexus of class, intersectional (economic,
sexual, anti-migrant) violence, marginalisation, (self-)isolation and suicide isworked through in recent novels by Hungarian-born novelist and translator
Terézia Mora (b. 1971) and Wilhelm Genazino (1943–2018). Rather than offering a large-scale theoretical commitment, this essay can be read as a dialogic
nod to Malte Ibsen’s A Critical Theory of Global Justice (2023), in which Ibsen
reconceptualises the labour of theory “as an inherently cooperative effort […] an
open-ended and intercultural platform for the critique of the pathologies andinjustices of global capitalist modernity” (Ibsen 2023, 348).
Focusing on Mora’s monumental novel Das Ungeheuer (2013) and on several of Genazino’s short novels that were published between 1977 and 2018, I
conduct comparative soundings of Mora’s and Genazino’s narrative approaches
to unflinchingly exploring the dehumanising dimensions of precarity.1 To what
extent do their fictional works respond to a calling that Max Horkheimer laconically summed up, in a notebook entry from 1969, as the “task to lend a voice
to unarticulated suffering” (“Aufgabe ist es, dem Sprache verleihen, das leidet
und stumm ist”) (Horkheimer 1988, 544)? Both Genazino, whose professors in
Frankfurt included Adorno, and Mora, whose suicidal protagonist is a voracious
reader of social theorists, provide moving and nuanced literary explorations ofwhat Oliver Nachtwey calls “downward mobility” (Nachtwey 2018, 103–161).
Nachtwey even explicitly mentions Genazino as a fiction writer from whom social theorists can learn (ibid., 3). For the sake of conceptual clarity, it is of vital
importance not to blur the terminological boundaries between precarity, a concept that focuses on concrete socio-economic factors, and precariousness, a rather vague term that runs the risk of being misused to depoliticise concerns about102Ol af Berwald

economic equity and social justice by offering a mere existentialist view of everybody’s mortality. Judith Butler (2009) defines precarity as a “politically induced
condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic
networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, anddeath,” and she warns against confusing “precarity” with a “postulation of a generalized precariousness” (25; 33).2 In the same vein, Marissia Fragkou (2019)asserts that “[t]he choice of the term ‘precarity’ rather than ‘precariousness’[…] deliberately serves to foreground the material conditions that facilitate andmaintain the uneven distribution of vulnerability and management of precariouslife” (6). Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen (2021) also assert that precarity “refers
more specifically to a range of experiences that are all somehow the outcomeof capitalism’s neoliberal mutation” (2). Following Butler’s, Fragkou’s, Rys andPhilipsen’s call to embrace the concept of precarity in order to investigate theconcrete realities of social and economic injustice, and their representations in
cultural texts, this chapter examines precarity as a thematic thread and narrative commitment in Genazino’s and Mora’s prose explorations of the irreversible
damage to which predatory capitalism and its inherent pandemic indifference toquestions of dignity and mental survival subject individual lives.

Internalised Class-Based Marginalisation in Genazino’s
NovelsPlayful aesthetic praxis and the activation of the reader’s awareness of class conflict, at times drastic, and sometimes wrapped in melancholic humour, are inextricably interwoven in Genazino’s novels. All his slim volumes of prose fiction canbe read as one continuous work of self-replicating episodic freeze-frames without a sequential linear plot, exemplifying Emily Hogg’s (2021) observation that“[p]recarity disrupts the experience of time’s passing” (160). In his 2004 Büchner
Prize acceptance speech titled “Der Untrost und die Untröstlichkeit der Literatur”(“The lack of consolation and the inconsolability of literature”), Genazino offers
an outline of a poetics that is informed by a dialectics of Hegelian and Marxian
provenance. Genazino asserts that the experience of reality coerces us to embrace
a way of thinking that is capable of contributing to social change. While a writertries to resist this coercion, their fiction “repeats” and “preserves” this conflict,and the literary work in turn makes it impossible for the reader to ignore existingsocial and economic injustice (Genazino 2004). In the same speech, Genazino
maintains that even as isolated individuals, we ought “to fight against the pathology” of the labour and housing market, as well as against “the pathology of aging”
and love. For Genazino, literature is always driven by an acute awareness of so-Narrating the Precariat103

cial, economic and emotional “deprivation” (“Mangel”), and he defines literature
as “our palliative habitat” (“unsere palliative Heimat”) in which the economy of
our longing (“unsere Sehnsuchtswirtschaft”) still survives (Genazino 2004).
Genazino’s posthumously published notebooks, which became available
in 2023, include a wide range of observations of and reflections on precarity
in the author’s immediate urban environment in Frankfurt. In a journal entry
from 2004, Genazino notes that many people in his neighbourhood suffer frompoverty and mental health challenges without having any access to healthcare(Genazino 2023, 335–336). In notebook entries from 2015 and 2017, Genazino
observes that “Die Zahl der Männer, die Mülltonnen öffnen und nach Nahrungsmitteln suchen, ist inzwischen fast so groß wie die Zahl der Männer, die ihr
Auto öffnen, einsteigen und dann davonfahren,”3 and he asserts that “[i]n den
Innenstädten hat es nie so viele Obdachlose gegeben, nie so viele Hungernde, die
die Papierkörbe durchwühlen, weil sie hoffen müssen, ein weggeworfenes Brotoder eine halbfaule Orange zu finden”4 (ibid., 414; 426).
The unnamed but outsider, middle-aged, male narrator-protagonists in Genazino’s novels are either unemployed or experience dehumanising work environments. They often walk through urban landscapes and observe minute detailsof the lives of seemingly intact but deeply damaged fellow citizens. Througha socially conscious and empathetic lens that is reminiscent of Büchner’s andBaudelaire’s works, Genazino’s narrators and protagonists, reliable in their attempts to navigate unreliable economic conditions, are diagnostic flaneurs whowalk through their unnamed home cities and observe their own and other people’s precarious, wounded lives. Analysing ‘flaneur’ narrators and protagonists
in novels by Siri Huvstedt, Ian McEwan and others, Eva Ries (2022) suggeststhat “contemporary Anglophone flânerie texts negotiate post-sovereign performances of subjectivity” (270). Genazino’s narrators inhabit a semi-sovereign status—while walking the margins of society, they purposefully undermine it by
not looking away from the victims of class warfare. At once relentless, precise
and compassionate, Genazino’s narrating voices offer incessant episodic soundings of society’s friable foundations.
The protagonist in Genazino’s novel Abschaffel (1977), a title that evokes negative connotations of being phased out and discontinued for the sake of accumulating money, is an office employee who experiences daily alienation and despair
at work where he feels that he does not belong. Quiet, despondent and jumpy, hetries not to let his despair lead him to hate his colleagues, an escalation to whichsome of his colleagues have already succumbed (Genazino 1977, 122). Feelingcompletely out of place at work, his persistent state of alienation there takes a
psychological toll on him: “Es ist eine ganz tolle Verzweiflung, wenn man merkt,
daß man dort, wo man ist, nicht hingehört”5 (ibid., 112).

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Witnessing the normalisation and internalisation of a gradual loss of selfesteem and dignity among employees and the unemployed alike forms a thematic thread throughout Genazino’s oeuvre. For example, the narrating wandering researcher of precarity and “observer of suffering” (“Leidbeobachter”) in
Genazino’s novel Wenn wir Tiere wären (If We Were Animals, 2011) notices acustomer in a supermarket who gives a tip to a female cashier during checkout,and seeing her accepting the tip without acting surprised makes him wonder
about whether cashiers’ salaries are now so much below a living wage that they
have to rely on donations in order to secure their basic needs (Genazino 2023,
221; Genazino 2011, 137). The narrator in Genazino’s novel Der Fleck, die Jacke,
die Zimmer, der Schmerz (The Stain, the Jacket, the Rooms, the Pain, 1989) witnesses the routine self-commodification of a female cashier who is sticking pricetags on her lower arm while frantically operating the register. He feels the urge
to take her by the hand and help her quit her job. But realising that insisting on
a world where working in dignity is possible would be considered a symptom of
insanity, he leaves the supermarket inconspicuously. “Draussen, auf der Strasse,
durchreisst mich ein kurzer Schmerz. Dann laufe ich so umher, wie die anderenes von mir erwarten dürfen”6 (54). This passage alludes to the famous endingof Georg Büchner’s novella Lenz (1836), whose suicidal protagonist undergoes
an irreversible mental crisis and finally resigns to simulating socially acceptedbasic human etiquette while feeling numb inside: “He seemed quite rational,
conversed with people, but a terrible emptiness lay within him, he felt no moreanxiety, no desire; he saw his existence as a necessary burden”7 (79).
While taking a walk in his unnamed city, the protagonist in Genazino’s novel
Ein Regenschirm für diesen Tag (An Umbrella for Today, 2001) is approached bya woman who asks him to watch her suitcase for a while. Only when she returns
holding a medical prescription in her hand does he realise that she is probably
homeless and was too embarrassed to take her suitcase with her to a doctor’s
waiting room (ibid., 11). Another example of someone quietly hiding their economic difficulties occurs in the same novel when the narrator wonders whether
his friend Margot supplements her income with occasional sex work (ibid., 91).
Genazino’s novels point at the systemic economic cruelty of a seemingly stillintact urban society whose state of destitution is quietly increasing. The narrator
in one of the episodes in Genazino’s novel Außer uns spricht niemand über uns(Except for Ourselves, Nobody Is Talking about Us, 2016) all of a sudden finds
himself among many slightly ragged people, arguably homeless, equipped withbackpacks and synthetic mattresses, prepared to sleep outside (20).
There are moments in Genazino’s short novels that encapsulate social wounds
and psychological injuries with an evocative precision that is rarely matched incontemporary fiction. In stark contrast to most flaneurs in modernist and post-Narrating the Precariat105

modern world literatures, Genazino’s narrative selves are not self-contained voyeurs who aestheticise destitution and despair. The narrative membrane between
observer and observed always remains permeable in his fiction. The following
passage from his novel Der Fleck, die Jacke, die Zimmer, der Schmerz (1989) is acompelling example of self-critical awareness of poverty and of the constant riskof becoming cruelly indifferent voyeurs of suffering. Genazino’s ‘flaneur’ does
not fit the conventional role expectations of an indifferent voyeur who consumes
spectacles of suffering. In this regard (of the pain of others), the narrator of thefollowing scene catches himself in the imminent act of almost labelling anotherhuman. He feels embarrassed for having almost succumbed to forming a fixed
image of a woman who lives in poverty and is possibly homeless:Über den Rudolfsplatz geht eine ältere, verwitterte, fast schon heruntergekommene Frau; sie zieht ein vollbeladenes, quetschendes, fahrbares Gestell hintersich her, auf dem (in Beuteln, Paketen und Kartons verpackt) alles verstaut ist,
was sie zum Leben noch braucht. Eine Minute lang will ich herausfinden, ob die
Frau noch MITGLIED der Gesellschaft ist oder nicht mehr, welche Zeichen an
ihr dafür sprechen und welche dagegen, ob sie als JENSEITIGE, als SCHWANKENDE oder ENDGÜLTIG ABGEGLITTENE zu betrachten ist. […] [D]ann bemerke ich, dass ich mich denkend an der Frau vergangen habe. Ich schäme michein wenig und versuche, die Frau anerkennend anzuschauen. Aber die Frau lehntmeine Blicke ab. Sie geht davon aus, dass sie von niemandem etwas zu erwarten
hat. Anerkennung schon gar nicht.8 (Genazino 1989, 97)

The narrator in Die Obdachlosigkeit der Fische (The Homelessness of Fish, 1994)
observes a homeless woman who appears to be an alcoholic who is standing infront of a house. A dog is approaching her and the woman starts to talk with thedog who is looking back at her, “the only living thing that still tolerates being close
to her.” The woman appears to be so grateful for being “seen” by the animal that
she tries to stroke it. But she slips and falls to the ground (Genazino 2006, 40).
In the same novel, the narrator, who works as an elementary school teacher,is haunted by a pedagogically disastrous moment that exemplifies the extent towhich the education system’s bureaucratised rigidity violates the psychological
freedom of children:
Einmal […] hat das verhaltensgestörte Kind zu mir gesagt: Ich weiss jetzt, daßzwei und zwei vier sind, ich will zu meiner Mama. Und als ich antwortete: Das
geht nicht, du musst warten, bis es läutet, habe ich genau bemerkt, wie das Kindvon dieser Antwort vergewaltigt wurde. Im Oktober wird die Vergewaltigung
forgesetzt.9 (ibid., 31)

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The narrator’s experience of having grown up very poor as a child in post-war
Germany still shapes his resistance to throwing away expired food in Außer uns
spricht niemand über uns (2016, 20).
When the narrator/protagonist in that novel, an unemployed actor, is offereda role in a local theatre, it turns out that it would be an unpaid engagement, andhe turns the offer down (ibid., 99). The narrator in Kein Geld, keine Uhr, keine
Mütze (2018) asks himself why he never learned any profession and was instead
surviving through an unpredictable series of temp jobs while being in constantly
dire financial straits (Genazino 2018, 69). He observes that the number of men
who open garbage bins searching for food is almost as high as the number ofmen who are employed to empty them (ibid., 14).
Genazino’s novels perform a precise modality of precarity research. In his
oeuvre, not even full-time employees lead undamaged lives. The narrating observer of his city’s daily life in Die Obdachlosigkeit der Fische (1994) observes aleaden psychic numbness among commuters on their bus home from work: “Jetzt
fahren sie wieder nach Hause, die armen kleinen Tiere, zu den Schlachtbänken
der Einbildung, der Vergeblichkeit und der Hoffnung”10 (Genazino 2006, 9). Noticing that the inside of the bus is dimly lit, the narrator muses that the burnt-out,
tired bus riders whom he perceives as tranquilised animals probably even prefer
not to be able to see themselves very well (ibid.).
While at the end of Das Glück in glücksfernen Zeiten (2009), Genazino’s narrator experiences a brief moment of euphoric happiness, hoping that he will still
be able to shape his own future, the thrust of his novels presents a grim outlook
on the chances for sustained social change (158). Instead of feeling empowered
to move toward a more bearable and breathable level of aliveness, the narrator in Kein Geld, keine Uhr, keine Mütze (2018) suffers from extreme indecisiveness that has turned into severe anxiety, of which he believes he could die
without anyone noticing (68). Wondering whether he has become inadvertently“frozen inside his stories,” the narrator offers a disillusioned self-diagnosis inperformative self-imprisonment prose, “a torpor becomes irreversible the moment in which the ossified person gladly tries to fit in with their state of torpor” (ibid.).11 With an acerbic self-consoling mantra that explicitly alludes to
Genazino’s university teacher Adorno’s volume, Minima Moralia: Nachrichten
aus dem beschädigten Leben (Reflections from Damaged Life, 1951), the narrator
in Mittelmäßiges Heimweh (2007) concludes, “I am damaged, I have time [Ich binbeschädigt, ich habe Zeit]” (189). In his posthumously published poetics lectures,
Die Angst vor der Penetranz des Wirklichen (The Fear of Reality’s Obtrusiveness,2020), Genazino posits that we have all lowered our expectations of society to themost fundamental physical and psychological necessities, uncertain of whether
we can even secure these aspirations anymore:Narrating the Precariat107
Die Menschen gehen dorthin, wo sie Arbeit, Liebe, Toleranz und dann auch nocheine Wohnung finden, mit anderen Worten: wo sie hoffen dürfen, dass sie von dermeist enttäuschenden Wirklichkeit nicht mehr allzu stark vergewaltigt werden
können.12 (33)Mora’s Exploration of Suicide and the Normalisation of
Exploitation
In her Frankfurt poetics lectures published as Nicht sterben (2014), Terézia Mora
explicitly declares her solidarity with Genazino’s aesthetic and political goal of“finding verbal images that can shed light” on economic and social issues thatare usually rendered scarcely visible, society’s “blind spots,”13 as Mora quotes
Genazino (Mora 2014, 146–147). Mora’s novel Das Ungeheuer (The Monster,
2013; French translation 2015, De rage et de douleur le monstre, received theGerman Book Award)—whose pages are literally divided in half, in the traditionof narrative split-screens practiced by Genet, Derrida’s Glas (1974, one column
partially in the voice of Christiane Hegel, the philosopher’s sister, who took her
own life in 1832), and J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year (2008)—offers one
narrative stream on the upper half of each page, narrating a journey undertaken
by Flora’s widower Darius, while presenting the reader either with empty spaceor with the journal entries of Flora, the female protagonist, that Darius foundon her laptop after her suicide. While the novel forms a part of a trilogy whose
other two volumes focus more on Darius, for the sake of this essay, Flora is by far
the more intriguing protagonist because she embodies the lethal irreversibilityof precarity (see Mora 2009 and 2019). Like Mora, Flora is Hungarian and immigrated to Germany. Also like the author, being a translator was one of Flora’s
career goals. The novel’s title evokes associations with Goya’s etching El sueño
de la razón produce monstruos (The Dream of Reason produces Monsters, 1799).
Delmira Agustini’s poem “Visión” (1913) defines sadness as “a monster” (“unmonstruo de tristeza”) that devours us from within (108–109), and the lyrical“I” in Manfred Peter Hein’s poem “Jahr um Jahr” (2006) perceives themselves as
their own monster (45; “Ungeheuer meiner selbst”). In her recently publishednon-fictional volume, Fleckenverlauf: Ein Tage- und Arbeitsbuch (Stain Progression: A Journal and Workbook, 2021), Mora reminds the reader that Mary Shelleydescribed herself as a “monster” because she felt as if she had been “composed
and manipulated by others, just like her sad protagonist [von anderen zusammengesetzt und manipuliert worden sei wie ihr trauriger Held]” (Mora 2012, 209).
Mora draws a clear parallel between Mary Shelley’s self-labelling and the state ofmind and struggle of Flora in Das Ungeheuer.

108Ol af Berwald

In her poetics lectures that were published as Der geheime Text (The Secret
Text, 2016), Mora asserts that “Das, was Flora widerfährt, ihre allmähliche Vernichtung durch ihr eigenes Inneres ist etwas, über das man nicht ‘flüssig’ erzählen kann”14 (Mora 2016, 102). This realisation must have contributed to Mora’s creation of narrative split-screens throughout the novel. The top half of eachpage presents a road-movie-style journey. Flora’s widower Darius is taking her
ashes to Italy, driving all the way in a car, accompanied by a young woman. In
an intertextual nod to Hölderlin’s and Brecht’s Empedocles texts, which present
divergent versions of the Ancient Greek philosopher’s suicide, Mora has Darius
finally arriving at the Aetna volcano with Flora’s ashes, where he presumably
spreads them.15
Darius’ mourning reflections on Flora’s long suffering offer an important contextual perspective on “food-insecure” life among Berlin’s academic precariat in
the early twenty-first century: “Also 20 Jobs, 20 körperlich schwere, geistig unter- und emotionell überfordernde Dienste, eine Fußsoldatin in der Armee dersogenannten Hilfskräfte”16 (Mora 2013, 48). In her essay on “pathologized femininity and capitalist economy” in Mora’s novel, Karin Terborg (2022, 174) highlights the suffocating force of precarity and exploitation in Flora’s life. Darius
remembers that long before her suicide, Flora had moved out and isolated herself
from him and the rest of the world:
Zuerst ist sie nur aufs Land gezogen, wir hatten gerade unsere Jobs verloren, beide
gleichzeitig, und das nicht zum ersten Mal, so was kommt vor, aber sie hat sicheinfach verweigert, sie hat sich geweigert, die Stadt jemals wieder zu betreten, sie
hat sich geweigert, unsere Wohnung zu betreten, sie hat den ganzen stürmischen
Herbst und den ganzen harten Winter in einer Hütte am Waldrand überstanden[…] Sie hat sich erhängt, an einem Baum, abseits des Wegs, anderthalb Tage, bis
sie jemand fand, barfuß.17 (Mora 2013, 39)

Darius hires a Hungarian translator to translate Flora’s electronic diary. As Anne
Fleig and Caroline Frank assert in recent articles, Darius becomes a compassionate reader of Flora’s journal, which helps him with his mourning process(Fleig 2019, 68; Frank 2022, 155). However, Darius’s reflections do not reveal any
adequate understanding of the depths of Flora’s long-term mental and physicalsuffering at the hands of a cruel social environment.
A foreign student without a work permit, Flora works occasional precarious
temp jobs (her first one is ironically a brief stint as an interpreter at a conference on communism) and is exploited in unpaid internships, where she is constantly harassed, humiliated and subjected to physical and psychological sexualand xenophobic violence. In a recent article, Meyer-Gosau summarises Flora’sNarrating the Precariat109

life of day-to-day abuse as “an unbearable humiliation [eine nicht zu ertragende
Kränkung] from beginning to end” (Meyer-Gosau 2019, 43).
Flora does not make a living wage. In her e-journal, she lists how much money she earns each month. For many months, that number is zero. As an unpaid
intern, Flora cannot afford anything beyond rent and food. She cannot even afford public transportation and clings to the hope that neither her bicycle nor her
shoes will be in need of repair or replacement in the near future (Mora 2013,133). When she catches pneumonia and has to spend several days in a hospital,
Flora is relieved because at least during her hospital stay she receives free food(ibid., 167). Flora undergoes repeated stays in a psychiatry ward: “3 Tage in derdummen Klinik. Weil ich mir nicht helfen konnte und in Pantoffeln und Top
schluchzend draussen in der Kälte herumlief ”18 (ibid., 382). Outlining her senseof loneliness, Flora identifies with her illness: “Niemand ist da. Die Krankheit
und du. Du und du”19 (ibid., 664). Flora is diagnosed with bipolar disorder (ibid.,
610–611). This leads her to consider the degree of “hatred” that “those” in society“who have not received any diagnosis” harbour “against those who have been
diagnosed”20 (ibid., 614).
At times in her journal, Flora expresses her fierce wish to live her daily life indignity, or at least to “reduce the level of being humiliated [Das Gedemütigt-seinminimieren]” (ibid., 104). Engaging in a moment of brutal self-loathing, Flora,
whose career goal is to work as a translator, tells herself,
Hör auf zu sagen, du wärst Übersetzerin. Einen Dreck bist du. Die korrekte Antwort lautet: ich jobbe als Kellnerin und Verkäuferin, ansonsten bin ich Hausfrau.
Und offensichtlich ist mir das nicht fein genug. Snobistische Schlampe.21 (ibid.,592)

Flora’s first sexual experience results in the cold-blooded lover’s (a teacher) demand to “have it removed” (ibid., 105–106). One employer uses Flora’s lack of awork permit as leverage against her (ibid., 309–310). She is routinely bullied atwork and during lunch (ibid., 295–297). Refusing the sexual advances of one ofher bosses, Flora notices “the hatred in his eyes” (ibid., 141). When Flora enters aused bookstore for a job interview, she leaves immediately upon witnessing thatthe owner is verbally abusing an employee (ibid., 306). A group of men assault
Flora on a sidewalk, “Der eine fasst mir zwischen die Beine. […] Ich werde nicht
weinen, nicht fluchen, nicht um Hilfe bitten, wie auch, ich spreche nicht einmal
die Sprache anständig”22 (ibid., 151). Another time, a man on a bicycle pursues
her on sidewalk, and firemen pour beer on her (ibid., 187). While Flora is walking on a sidewalk, a man mistakes her for a prostitute and injures her leg, and an
ambulance arrives (ibid., 361–362).

110Ol af Berwald

When she is beaten up on a sidewalk again, Flora believes that her lack ofparental care is noticeable and contributes to her being the target of so many
assaults: “Niemandes Kind. Der Mann, der mich auf der Strasse verprügelt hat,
konnte es tun, weil er gesehen hat, dass ich ein Niemandskind bin”23 (ibid., 367).
Flora’s reflections on the constant bullying and physical attacks perform vertiginous vicious circles: “Die Frage ist nicht, wie konnte das passieren. Die Frageist, wieso passiert es nicht jeden Tag. Tut es doch”24 (ibid., 362). “[S]ich vertilgen auf Raten Wenigstens benutze ich keine Männer mehr dafür.”25 Flora feels
fragmented and thrown away “like a shard [wie eine Scherbe]” (ibid., 382). On a
regular basis, Flora suffers from nightmares of being physically attacked, raped,
tortured and killed (ibid., 271–273; 363–365).
Flora becomes an astute diagnostician of society’s systemic ills and their devastating self-silencing impact on individual lives:
Die Stufen des Schmerzes. Schmerz, den man aushalten kann, ohne einen Ton zu
sagen. Schmerz, den man sprechend aushalten kann. Schmerz, den man weinend
aushalten kann. Schmerz, den man brüllend aushalten kann. Schmerz, den man
winselnd aushalten kann. Und schließlich erneut: Schmerz, den man nur tonlos
aushalten kann. […] Überhaupt, die Leute, die nicht mehr reden können. Die
Skala der Verstummung.26 (ibid., 192, 396)

In disagreement with her psychiatrist, Flora posits that “sein Leid nicht mitteilen, also keine Hilfe erfahren zu können, kann einen umbringen”27 (ibid.,251). However, in palinodic fear of verbalising her inner thoughts and emotions,
Flora admonishes herself: “Rühr dich nicht. Schweig still. Nicht nur außen. Drinnen. Kein Wort. Wenn du es aussprichst, bringt es dich um”28 (ibid., 675). In thesame vein, after having read the medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart, Florawrites in her journal, “Ich traue mich nicht, die Dinge im Grund meiner Seele
zu benennen. Wenn ich ihren Namen ausspreche, töten sie mich”29 (ibid., 380).
At times, Flora uses her e-journal to comfort and encourage herself and to
give herself survival technique advice: “Draußen sein zu müssen ist schrecklich.
Aber es nicht mehr zu können ist es ebenfalls. Sei draußen, solange du es kannst,
und dann sei wieder drinnen, solange du das kannst”30 (ibid., 582). Flora concedes that one of the major effects of all her traumatising experiences has been
being filled with hatred: “Das Problem ist, dass ich keine Angst empfinde, keine
Verzweiflung oder Traurigkeit. Kein Beleidigtsein. […] Sondern: Hass”31 (ibid.,369–370).
Echoing Arno Gruen’s critique of what constitutes “normal,” Joyce McDougall’s term “normopathy” and Christopher Bollas’ concept of “normotic personality,” the obsessive pursuit to conform, Flora articulates, and refuses to disap-

Narrating the Precariat111

pear into, the mise-en-abime of “becoming ill from trying to be normal [Krankwerden am Versuch, normal zu sein]” (ibid., 176; see Bollas 1989, 137–156). Florais mocking society’s systemic psychological violence through relentless demands
to conform: “Als wäre ich tauglich. Ein nützliches Glied der Gesellschaft. Alswürde dazu gehören, dass man sich konform verhält. Dem anderen nicht durchdeine Natur zur Last fallen. Wahre Höflichkeit”32 (Mora 2013, 441). In anotherjournal entry, Flora lists her marketable skill set with disarming precision anda bit of sarcasm: “Meine Fähigkeiten […] Meine positiven Eigenschaften sind:Einfühlungsvermögen Fleiss Verlässlichkeit Pünktlichkeit Ehrlichkeit Meine‘negativen’ Eigenschaften sind: / Ich habe es gerne, wenn man mich respektvoll
behandet, allerdings erwarte ich das nur von Gesunden”33 (ibid., 600–601).
In rare moments of reprieve from relentless dehumanisation, Flora enjoys
brief glimpses into the possibility of trust and inner warmth. For example, in a
gynaecologist’s waiting room, she has a sympathetic conversation about the lackof empathy in society with an older patient who also suffers from anxiety andanger (ibid., 595–597). The few temporary jobs that Flora enjoys are short lived,
including three weeks as a salesperson at a coffee-shop, from which she is let go
because the owner does not have the financial resources to continue to employ
her, and a six-month job at a bakery that Flora describes as the happiest time ofher life, until it is made unbearable by a xenophobic customer (ibid., 307).
In her diary, Flora also notes a momentary experience of happiness whencatching a glimpse of indestructible strength and beauty in nature:
Für einen Moment war es gelungen; ich ging auf der Strasse, die übliche Hölle,sah mich verzweifelt um, was könnte helfen, und erblickte den knorrigen,kahlen Baum im Kirchgarten, und wie ich in seine Krone hineinsah, in diesevollkommene, wunderschöne Schwärze, spürte ich, wie das Glück in meinem
Körper anwuchs, ich spürte, jetzt bin ich glücklich. Ich sah sie mir an, die kahle
Baumkrone, der Stamm war zerfetzt, überall beschnitten, ein hässlich malträtierter Stamm, aber die Krone, die Krone im Winterregen war perfekt. Sie machtemich glücklich für etwa 5 Sekunden. Danach wirkte es nicht mehr. Ich ging weiterin der Hölle.34 (ibid., 625)

During another walk in a cemetery, Flora is elated to hear a part-time assistantgardener with a health condition telling her patronising supervisor, “Just leaveme alone […] Can’t you see that I’m already sweeping the leaves as well as I can?
[…] I saw and heard it and I was happy. I’m sweeping as well as I can. Thankyou”35 (ibid., 429). But her rare glimpses into a bearable life are not enough for
Flora to overcome the cruelty of her daily experiences, and her class-conscious
self-diagnosis is an unanswered cry for help: “Ich schäme mich dafür, ein Mensch

112Ol af Berwald

zu sein”36 (ibid., 273). While most recently, social theorists Christoph Menke, in
his Theorie der Befreiung (2022, 465), and Fréderic Gros in his volume La Honte
est un Sentiment Révolutionnaire (2021, 169–170), elaborate on their Marxian
hope for a revolutionary potential of “shame,” for Genazino’s Flora, the onslaughtof economic, physical and emotional humiliation remains insurmountable.
Can we overcome interpersonal and systemic numbness and violence under
predatory economic conditions? An avid reader of Erich Fromm and Arno Gruen, Flora considers the possibility of “repairing” societies and individuals (Mora2013, 407). She asks herself whether a non-violent society is possible: “Was füreine Arbeit wäre das, bis man jeden Einzelnen soweit hätte, dass er sich nicht nur
dann lebendig fühlt, wenn er etwas zerstört”37 (ibid., 368). Mora’s and Genazino’s literary projects invite the reader to social explorations beyond perpetuating
split-screens of “the aesthetic” versus “the political.”38 Their vulnerable narrating
voices are discomforting and indispensable.
Far from merely thematising structural social injustice, Mora’s and Genazino’s
unsparing novels co-advance the shared labour of reading social wounds by fostering the reader’s perceptiveness and productive fury about what the narrator
in Genazino’s novel Die Kassiererinnen (1998) exposes as an unbearable socially
imposed discrepancy between “Wie großartig wir denken können und wie armselig wir leben müssen”39 (Genazino 1998, 12). Mora’s 2013 novel and Genazino’s
fiction from the 1970s to the 2010s conduct narrative examinations of the “monstrosity” of a society that imposes precarity on a growing segment of its population. While their narrative techniques are slightly divergent, Mora’s and Genazino’s works can be fruitfully read together. One can even imagine a “monstrous”
reading of Genazino’s fiction as possible parts of passages composed by Mora’s
e-diary writer Flora. Genazino’s and Mora’s works that have been briefly discussed here heed Max Horkheimer’s warning that theory is a form of aggression(“Theorie ist Aggression”) (Horkheimer 1988, 224). “Theorists” of social andeconomic change solely through the craft of fiction writing and in full awarenessof every fixed terminology’s tendency toward self-commodification, Mora andGenazino refrain from offering simplistic escape routes. Their protagonists andthe people observed by them do not exemplify generic universal crises of thehuman condition. Instead, they witness and experience the concrete continuous
threat that social and economic precarity poses to the mind and body. Mora’s andGenazino’s works present and perform a partial (and in Flora’s case, an irreversible) disintegration of human resilience. In doing so, they cultivate new kindsof readers who are unwilling to accept that precarity, and mediated collective
numbness towards it, have the final word.

Narrating the Precariat113

Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
6.

7.

8.

All translations of quoted passages from Mora’s and Genazino’s works in this essay aremine.
See also Isabell Lorey’s affirmative reception of Butler’s emphasis on the need to distinguish between precariousness and precarity (2015, 17–22).
“[T]he number of men who open trashcans to search for food equals the number ofmen who open and get into their car and drive away.”“[T]he number of the homeless in inner cities has never been this high, there havenever been so many starving people who go through the trash, hoping to find breadthat someone has thrown away, or a half-rotten orange.”“It is a completely insane kind of despair to realise that you do not belong where you are.”“Outside, on the street, I am briefly being torn apart by pain. Then I continue to walkaround just like the others can justly expect me to.”
The German original reads: “Er tat alles, wie es die andern taten. Es war aber eineentsetzliche Leere in ihm.”“An older, weather-beaten woman is crossing Rudolf Square. She is pulling a fully
packed, overly stuffed cart behind her on which (packed in bags, bundles, and cardboard boxes) all her bare necessities are stowed. For a moment I want to find out
whether the woman is still a MEMBER of society or not anymore, what about her
indicates for or against counting her as being OUTSIDE of society, TEETERING or
IRREVOCABLY SLIPPED. […] [T]hen I realise that my thoughts about her constituted a form of violation. A bit embarrassed, I try to look at the woman appreciatively.
But the woman refuses my attempt to make eye contact. She assumes that she cannot
expect anything from anyone. Least of all recognition.”“Once the child with a behavioural condition told me, ‘Now I know that two plus two
makes four, I want to go to my mom.’ And when I responded, ‘That is not possible, youhave to wait until the bell rings,’ I clearly noticed the child being violated by this kindof answer. The violation will proceed in October.”
10. “Now they are on their way home, these poor miserable animals, to the slaughterhouseblocks of the imagination, futility and hope.”
11. The German original reads: “Denn eine Erstarrung war erst dann eine Erstarrung,wenn der Erstarrte sich freudig in seine Erstarrung fügte.”
12. “Humans move to where they can find work and love, where they are tolerated and caneven find an apartment to stay, in other words where they can hope that reality, whilemostly bringing disappointments, will not continue to violate them too extremely anymore.”
13. Literally, “Die Sprachbilder finden, die das bis dahin Diffuse erhellen können (‘Dietoten Winkel ausleuchten,’ wie Genazino es nannte.)” On the social implications and libidinal economies of the text/image dialectic, see for example Rancière 2009 and 2019.
9.

114Ol af Berwald
14. “What Flora is subjected to, her gradual obliteration by her own inner self, is some-thing that cannot be narrated ‘fluently.’”
15. The novel’s final sentence reads: “Von Catania nach Gravina, von Gravina nach Rifugio

Sapienza, von dort aus zu Fuss” (Mora 2013, 681).
16. “20 jobs, 20 physically demanding kinds of service for which she was intellectually over-qualified but emotionally unprepared, a foot soldier in the army of so-called temps.”
17. “At first she just moved to the countryside, we both had just lost our jobs, both at thesame time, not for the first time, it happens, but she simply closed herself off of anybody, she refused to ever return to the city, she refused to set foot in our apartment,
she endured the whole stormy fall and the whole hard winter in a cabin at the edge ofthe forest […] She hanged herself at a tree, off the path, it took one and a half days until
someone found her, barefoot.”
18. “3 days in the stupid hospital. Because I was helplessly running outside in the cold in
slippers and a top, sobbing.”
19. “Nobody is there. The sickness and you. You and you.”20. “Der Hass derer, die keine Diagnose haben, auf die, die eine haben.”
21. “[S]top pretending that you are a translator. You are a piece of crap. The correct answer
is, I work temp jobs as a waitress and salesperson, otherwise I am a homemaker. And
that is obviously not good enough for me. Snobbish slut.”
22. “One of them grabs me between my legs. […] I’m not going to cry or curse of ask for
help, how could I, I don’t even speak the language properly.”
23. “Nobody’s child. The man who beat me up on the street was able to do it because hesaw that I’m nobody’s child.”
24. “The question is not how this could happen. The question is why does it not happen
every day. But it does.”
25. “Obliterating oneself incrementally. At least I don’t use men for that anymore.”
26. “The levels of pain. Pain that is endurable without making any sound. Pain that you

can endure talking. Pain that you can endure crying. Pain that you can endure screaming. Pain that you can endure whimpering. And finally: Pain that you can only enduresoundlessly. […] The people who are not capable of expressing themselves anymore.
The degrees of falling silent.”
27. “[N]ot being able to communicate one’s own suffering can get you killed.”
28. “Do not move. Stay quiet. Not only towards the outside world. Inside. Not a word. If
you spell it out it will kill you.”29. “I don’t dare to spell out the things that I carry deep in my soul. They will kill me when
I speak their name.”
30. “Leaving one’s place is frightful. But so is not being able to do it anymore. Leave yourplace for as long as you can bear, and then be inside again for as long as you can stand it.”
31. “The problem is that I don’t feel any fear, despair, or sadness. Not feeling offended. […]But: full of hate.”Narrating the Precariat115
32. “As if I were serviceable. A useful member of society. As if acting in conformity werepart of it. Not inconveniencing others by being yourself. True politeness.”
33. “My positive qualities are: Empathy diligence reliability punctuality honesty My ‘nega-tive’ qualities are: I like to be treated respectfully, but I only expect that from sane people.”
34. “For a moment it worked; I was walking on the street, the usual hell, I look around me

in despair, what could help me, and I saw the gnarly leafless tree in the churchyard, andas I looked into its crown, into this perfect, beautiful blackness, I felt happiness growinside my body, I felt, ‘I am happy now.’ I took a good look at the leafless treetop, thetrunk was torn apart, cut back everywhere, an ugly maltreated trunk, but the crown,
the crown in the winter rain was perfect. It made me happy for approximately 5 seconds. After that it did not help anymore. I continued to walk in hell.”
35. The German original reads: “Es ist mir gelungen, zum Friedhof zu gehen, um dort
zu spazieren – phantastisch. Lass mich bloss in Ruhe, sagte die behinderte Friedhofspflege-Aushilfe zu ihrer sie bevormundenden Kollegin. Ich fege doch schon so gut
ich kann! Und fegte und fegte trockene Blätter von der Allee zur Kapelle. Ich sah undhörte das und war glücklich. Ich fege doch schon so gut ich kann! Danke.”36. “I am ashamed of being a human.”
37. “What kind of labour would it require to bring each individual to the point of not only
feeling truly alive when they destroy something.”
38. See my previous contribution to this question: “Do we have a nuanced vocabularythat enables us to discuss the role of contemporary literature in advocating for social
justice without reducing the mutual suspicions of the aesthetic and the political to arigid dichotomy?” (Berwald 2015, 275).
39. “[O]ur magnificent cognitive capabilities and the miserable ways to which we are constrained to live.”

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2.3“Know Where to Fish”
Class and Gender Precarity and Project-based Networks
in Creative and Cultural Industries
Valeria Pulignano, Deborah Dean, Markieta Domecka
and Lander Vermeerbergen

Introduction
In the sociology of work, Kalleberg (2018) describes precarity in the formal
economy as “employment that is uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from thepoint of view of the worker” (1). It is accepted that project work is, to varying
degrees, precarious work (Hodgson 2004) and to aid understanding of the complex phenomenon of precarisation across economies, we consider areas of thecreative industries, where the project form is predominant (Eikhof and Warhurst2013). Specifically, we aim at understanding how and why the facilitating process of the project form, the network, contributes to systemic patterns in projectwork commodification and to the generation of precarity which is grounded ona class-based understanding of gender. In so doing, we locate the understandingof ‘class imaginaries’ in contemporary cultural and creative industries (CCIs),
and the concept of class in general, at the intersection of ideological and socioeconomic dimensions. Accordingly, we use a broader sociological definition ofsocial class which focuses on the inequality of access to resources and refers toa meaningful status characteristic that influences people’s perceptions and expectations, as does gender. Grabher (2004) calls networking “the emblematic
practice in project ecologies” (1502) and analyses have shown that networks inthe creative industries shape organisational outcomes (Antcliff, Saundry andStuart 2007; Grugulis and Stoyanova 2011; Sydow and Staber 2002); however,the dimensions involved in how and why are less well established. Studies report on networking as the way “to overcome information asymmetries within
the project-based political economy of creative production” (Lee 2011, 550) andthese asymmetries represent two, linked, aspects of networking—effective pro-

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tection of insiders and effective exclusion of outsiders—that are important tounderstanding patterns in precarity. As we shall see, although networking practices differ across countries and sectors, there are strong similarities in how they
particularly affect self-employed women’s ability to acquire and trade creativeand financial gains.
We argue that disadvantaging networking processes derive from commodification in project work, which must be considered as an embedded form within
industrial and national contexts (i.e. socio-economic and policy structures) inassessing their effects on unequal outcomes which are naturalised through ideology and cultural normative processes eventually generating inequality. Commodification in project work refers to the employing project organisations shifting risk by “imposing the discipline of market competition on workers” (Greer
2016, 165). Therefore, our attention is directed at an under-researched dimension of precarity: how this type of project work is organised (Peticca-Harris,
Weststar and McKenna 2015).
This chapter considers creative industry networks as mediating precarious
outcomes for aspirant workers through informal, individualised cultural processes. In particular, we contend that understanding how and why networks organise project-based transactions can be achieved through a synthesis of material and non-material lenses. First, we illustrate that the project work dynamics
accounting for how creative capacity is commodified in the marketplace involvethe industrial logic of risk minimisation and the national regulatory contexts inwhich they are embedded. Second, in investigating how these dynamics affectproject workers, we show the homophilous processes that generate inclusion andexclusion, through classed, gendered ‘sorting.’ In so doing, we can identify theconditions under which certain outcomes occur and contribute to organisation
studies’ theorising about project work, and specifically its facilitation of a precarity which is class-based and gendered. We ground our argument within an empirical comparative cross-national study of precarious jobs within CCIs, and use
a narrative ‘storytelling’ approach as a heuristic tool for the analysis of precarity
which makes it possible to uncover broader tendencies in the rearticulation ofclass experiences in relation to race and gender.
We define class in Bourdieusian terms, following Savage et al. (2015), whose
work on class has been informed by ‘capitals, assets, resources’ (1013) and focuses first of all on the relationship between class and inequality. Central to our argument on class and gender precarity in CCI is the structural asymmetry translated into more open or more constrained access to resources. Hence, precarious
class-based outcomes are identified as the unequal positioning of workers within
and incomplete access to networks of sociability and recognition as detrimental
to upward mobility.

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Creative Industry Project Work Dynamics and Networks
The output of creative industries is uncertain before and during its ‘making,’ asis its outcome (Menger 2014), and high degrees of risk are therefore inherent(Caves 2000). Creative organisations utilise project work partly to achieve flexibility within an inherently volatile and unpredictable market for creative products (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2011). These projects are precarious because
they emerge from market-based employer demands, which are intermittent,
temporary and unpredictable, and work arrangements that are contingent andcasual (McKinlay and Smith 2009).
Recruitment and selection via networks are outcomes of the project-based
nature of creative work, which increasingly results from the wider retrenchment
and downsizing creative organisations have been undergoing since the 1990s(Baumann 2002). We know that precarious work has been disproportionately
done by women across sectors (Fudge and Owens 2006) and in the creative industries patterns of gendered occupational segregation remain distinct (such as
higher-status cinematographers being mainly men, and lower-status makeup
artists mainly women) (Taylor et al. 2017), and, as our findings clarify, risk is notshifted in gender-neutral ways.
Recruitment, training and quality control are informally fulfilled by networks,
mainly consisting of production managers, heads of department and establishedworkers trusted as having knowledge that needs to be passed on. The economic
logic underpinning creative organisations influences their capacity to take on ortransfer risk in order to minimise costs. This logic, combined with oversupplied
labour markets, encourages and enables reliance on trust (Antcliff, Saundry andStuart 2007) and “reproducing the familiar” (Dean 2008, 169), which entrenches
gender segmentation in products, and in how and by whom those products are
made.
Work in organisation and employment studies considers power relations (inherent in informal networks) as a key driver of gender inequality (Healy, Kirton and Noon 2010), and Acker’s (2000) and others’ work on organisations asembedding and expressing gendered differentiation is well known. The career
structures within and surrounding creative organisations are similarly gendered(Tuckett 2019) and indicate use of distinctive resources by the (very largely) men
dominating them. Organisation and employment studies scholars have pointed
to the over-representation of white, male, middle-class gatekeepers, such as film
and TV writers and casting directors (Friedman, O’Brien and Laurison 2017)
and the significance of gatekeepers and intermediaries in shaping disadvantage(Dean 2008; Delmestri et al. 2020; Grugulis and Stoyanova 2012). US researchhas evidenced women’s disadvantage in US TV and film production (Lauzen

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2019), and the ways in which networks operate to facilitate these discriminatory
effects (Christopherson 2009). As we will show, the power relationships which
underlie concentration of resources nurture “the social processes through whichforms of capital can be developed and transformed” (Vincent 2016, 1166), andtherefore add understanding of how class-based gendered processes of precarisation unfold.

Theoretical Synthesis
There are many different lenses through which to understand the complex phenomena of unequal access to work in the creative industries. These include:
examination of multiple levels producing racist exclusion in film industry performance and production jobs (Hennekam and Syed 2018); social class origin
as a barrier for performers (Friedman, O’Brien and Laurison 2017); and accessto work as tied to societal positions and conceptions of ‘women’ (Dean 2008).
Whatever their focus, most accounts mention the relevance of networks to access. Notably, Antcliff, Saundry and Stuart (2007) emphasise the importance ofpower relations in the valuing of social capital in UK television sector networks,
as well as for trust and friendship in a fragmented, competitive landscape. In doing so, they concentrate on the significance of forms of network rather than theirgendered effects. Grugulis and Stoyanova’s (2012) study of UK film and TV does
examine racialised, gendered effects of social capital and networks and provides
valuable insights into the relationship between ‘quality’ of networks and ‘quality’of jobs (1311). Here, we focus primarily on understanding the relation between
networks and class-based gendered precarity, which necessitates integrating
several conceptual elements as patterns of inequality in access are generated atcountry, sector and occupational/individual (network) levels.
In common with Lamont, Beljean and Clair (2014), we recognise the importance of specifying ‘cultural processes’ in understanding inequalities (here, inaccess to, and distribution within, creative industry projects). The authors define
cultural processes as “ongoing classifying representations/practices that unfold
in the context of structures (organizations, institutions) to produce various typesof outcomes” (586) and we see the operations of networks as cultural processes
fostering commodification mechanisms at industry (and country) levels. We
discuss the homophilous nature of these operations linked to the sorting practices in their creation and maintenance of boundaries and hierarchies (Lamont
et al. 2014, 598) within these contexts.

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Meshing Different Theoretical Conceptualisations
To understand the sorting practices sustaining commodification, we consider
Charles Tilly’s theoretical conceptualisation of inequality as ‘opportunity hoarding,’ as refined by Erik Olin Wright, with a gendered reading of Pierre Bourdieu’s
theory of capital, in particular the concept of ‘symbolic capital.’ Their connections with industrial and country ‘material’ contexts is elaborated, to produce
an analytical framework that enables us to account for the patterns we observe.
As indicated, creative project networks act as informal recruitment structuresin mediating access to work. This informality, and dispersed knowledge, create
the need to both interpret and indicate dimensions of (technical) suitability and(social) acceptability (Jewson and Mason 1986), resulting in fair/unfair discrimination, or sorting. Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of symbolic capital, as misrecognition of resources (“unrecognized as capital and recognized as legitimate competence,” 18), enables us to begin to account for these processes. Symbolic capitalis understood as the ways in which an individual’s possession of other capitals
is signalled. Possession of these capitals—economic (money, property rights),
cultural (embodied dispositions, in an institutionalised form like qualifications)and social (resources linked to group membership, providing credentials)—isrepresented to ‘dominating’ others indirectly through legitimised signs of ‘recognition.’ In our study contexts, examples might include willingness to accept
an unpaid job in TV or possession of a white male body in dance. Moi (1991)
argues that, despite the lack of gendered awareness in his original theorising, theconcepts Bourdieu developed allow for room “to determine what kind of specificconsequences” (1019) conceptual claims might have, and thus contribute to a
general analysis of social power. Illustrating this point, Vincent (2016) utilises
Bourdieusian concepts in his study of self-employed women HR consultants,
surfacing the effects of “(patriarchal) structures of time within fields” (1179).
There is a significant body of work engaging with Bourdieu’s concepts in relation
to women’s employment. Our own focus is not women workers per se, but on
how and why the creative project networks operate so as to promote a class- andgender-based understanding of precarity.
Bourdieu (1986) sees capital in the forms noted above as “what makes thegames of society—not least, the economic game—something other than simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle” (15).
We see the operation of creative industry projects as a useful example of thisargument. Each project (or game) offers opportunity for occupational advancement and creative fulfilment. Each is new, therefore uncertain and ostensibly
open to the widest range of talent for the alchemy necessary for transformation
into a successful product. Instead, we see similar patterns across industries and124

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countries of over-representation of predominantly white men and middle- andupper-class people in the most rewarded occupations. Moi’s (1991) summary of
Bourdieu’s concept of the field as “a competitive system of social relations whichfunctions according to its own specific logic or rules” (1020) maps directly on tocreative project networks. Core to the field is the power to attribute or withhold‘legitimacy’ (here, assign competence), through possession of symbolic capital
particular to that field and recognised as such by others. This recognition forms
part of the habitus (internalised norms and values) of the players in the field andtherefore, pertinently for our study, the field “functions as a form of censorship”(ibid., 1022), excluding those without the requisite symbolic capital. As Bourdieu(1989) argues, “agents are distributed in the overall social space […] according tothe overall volume of capital they possess” (17).
This distribution can be explained by Tilly’s (1998) argument that structures
can underwrite a ‘hoarding’ of various kinds of opportunities, as the expressionof power relationships. Accordingly, ‘durable inequalities’ are constructed within
and through organisations and they are ‘social relational’ in character. For instance, reputation (symbolic capital, shared recognition) is an intangible sorting
mechanism mediated by dominant network figures and used by—ultimately—organisations in access to future work. As Menger (2006) puts it, “the several
dimensions of inequality are magnified by the work system in the arts, whichbuilds on networks, reputation, short term contracts, and highly individualized
performance ratings” (40).
Tilly (1998) is clear that ‘opportunity hoarding’ does not necessarily involve
exploitation, but that this complementarity can occur, as when “the effort of afavoured minority provides a resource-owning elite with the means to extract
surplus from an essential but otherwise unavailable larger population” (154).
Thus, in our terms, networks involving dominant gatekeepers to projects do not
exploit (or acquire) economic capital from their operations. However, opportunity hoarding via these project-based creative industry networks facilitates exploitation, and thus increases precarity.
Bounding of categories in occupational networks is where the relevance ofsymbolic capital becomes evident. Wright (1997), conceptualising the interaction of class and gender, argues that there is “an agenda of issues that need to beconsidered within empirical research and theory construction” (118) and oneof the five forms of class/gender interrelations he conceptualises is especiallypertinent here, which is gender sorting into class locations. He discusses social
science explanations of gender differences in occupational distributions, noting that forms of “inequality, domination and discrimination” can have direct
effects on opportunities for access to different types of jobs, or indirect effects
on access “by affecting their acquisition of relevant resources” (ibid., 122). This“Know Where to Fish”125

recalls Tilly’s opportunity hoarding, which indeed Wright compares to his own
concept of “non-exploitative economic oppression” (ibid., 31), where one groupis advantaged at the expense of others. However, Wright (2000) critiques Tilly’s
own criticism of ‘individualist’ explanations of inequality as misplaced in placing more emphasis on the “organizational bases for exploitation” (458) than on
multi-causal explanations involving inequality culture in general. Our consideration of project networks utilises this plural lens.

Contextualising a Class- and Gender-Based Understandingof Precarity
Although the concept of opportunity hoarding is valuable in understanding how
the operation of networks takes account of the gendered accrual and recognitionof symbolic capitals, nevertheless economic rules of engagement bind individuals within social and industrial contexts (Sydow and Staber 2002). As we shallsee in discussion of findings, these practices reflect specificities indicative of thewider economic and social relations of production. This in turn affects the functioning of project networks, whereby opportunities are increased or reduced.
Contexts can be more or less de-commodified (and therefore precarious) inthe extent to which industry structures reflect marketisation and state support,
and people can still obtain social protections (exposed to more or less risk) regardless of their work arrangement (Kalleberg 2018). Greer, Salamuk and Umney (2019) theorise the need to take account of embeddedness issues in a more
actor-centred approach. An informed understanding of our findings requires
this approach: here, the state is not a direct transaction organiser, but a ‘silent actor’ in that it can mitigate commodification. Meardi, Donaghey and Dean (2016)
and Pulignano, Dean, Domecka and Vermeerbergen (2023) reiterate the importance of attending to the role of the state in gender relations and employment
and thus “understanding […] state intercession in its nation’s class system” (566).
The degree and nature of the endemic risk in creative industries is also affected by incentives emerging from differing country-based market governanceregimes, central to the nature of project work (Christopherson 2002). Throughexerting downward pressure on costs, they undermine institutional structures
which might mitigate precarity instead. Aroles, Hassard and Hyde (2021) discuss precarity in creative institutions as a situation in which “there is almost
total cessation in traditional funding,” which leaves the organisation “financiallypowerless and forced to focus on short-term strategies and plans” (14). As Doerflinger, Pulignano and Vallas (2020) further posit, it is important to identify
construction of distinct types of economic and social forms of production wherecommodified labour might have access to structural power if they “hold strate-

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gic locations within the labor process or favorable positions in the labor market” (6). This brings us to the precise significance of networks to a class- andgender-based understanding of precarity in project work. Reliance on previously‘tested’ people is seen as desirable, if not essential, in time-limited and inherently risky projects. Thus, we see dominant network actors discriminating intheir recognition/assignation of competence to those in possession of relevant
symbolic capital, their dominant positions enabling them to hoard opportunities. Men’s (especially white, middle-class men’s) occupation of Doerflinger etal.’s (2020) ‘strategic locations’ (6) is clear, as is the research showing that men
are more likely to benefit from the ‘old boys’ network than women (Grugulis andStoyanova 2012).
Recalling the significance of cultural processes (Lamont, Beljean, and Clair2014) noted above, we argue that what animates the class-based operation ofsorting practices by networks is homophily, i.e. individuals’ preference for interacting with others similar to themselves in terms of social characteristics such as
gender, class and ‘race’ (Ibarra 1992; 1995), enabled/promoted by the commodification inherent in the project form (Bushell, Hoque, and Dean 2020; Melamed
et al. 2020).
Homophily is operationalised through networks’ (mis)recognition of symbolic capital. However, as we contend below, the extent of the power of dominant
networks to hoard opportunities through such recognition is bounded by industrial (and national) contexts.

Research Design and Methodology
We use autobiographical narrative interviews (Schütze 2008) to contextualise thesubjective experiences into class background. Here, we refer to Savage, Wardeand Devine’s (2005) consideration of resources as both economic (income)and cultural (educational credentials and competences acquired through family which “secure and perpetuate access to economic capital” (Crompton 1998,149)) to allocate people to a specific class category. We asked each participant toself-identify in class terms (Reay 1998) in light of types of resources possessed,
as in Savage et al. (2005). These are economic (income), social (networks) andcultural (educational credentials and competences acquired through the family)
resources, and they “secure and perpetuate access to economic capital” (Crompton 1998, 149). We were also able to assess some class-based resources throughnarrative analysis, such as family’s financial support in relation to training, unpaid work and unemployment, parents’ occupation and family lifestyle (placeof residence, holidays and activities), as well as networks of family and friends.

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We selected two industries (TV/film, dance) and four countries (Britain, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands) where we studied the industries following a
two-by-two comparison (TV/film in Britain and Germany and dance in Sweden
and the Netherlands). The selection-to-difference along both country and industry dimensions was motivated by our expectation of revealing the relative potency of both contexts affecting patterns and cross-cutting mechanisms. Categories
were based on: the prevalence of inherently precarious project work, resulting
from significant changes in industries and countries; the higher concentration of
women in dance in comparison to TV/film industries; and the under-researchedstatus of dance in comparison to TV/film.
We conducted seventy-seven interviews (fifty-one narrative with projectworkers and twenty-six semi-structured with experts) (Table 1 for sample description of expert interviews). Twenty-five narrative interviews were conducted
in TV/film in Britain and Germany. In the Netherlands and Sweden, in dance,
we collected twenty-six narrative interviews across different genres (i.e. ballet,
contemporary dance and street dance). Using snowball sampling, we interviewed twenty-seven women (eleven in TV/film and sixteen in dance), twentythree men (fourteen in TV/film and nine in dance) and one non-binary person(in dance) (Table 2 for sample description of biographical narrative interviews).
Table 1: Participant overview: expert interviews
TV/Film

Position of interviewees and number of interviews

United Kingdom

Academic (N=1), Trade unionist (N=2), Representative ofGermany

professional association (N=1)
Academic (N=3), Trade unionist (N=1), Representative ofEuropeprofessional association (N=2)
Trade unionist (N=2), Representative of professional association
(N=1)

Dance
SwedenAcademic (N=2), Trade unionist (N=1), Representative ofprofessional association (N=1), Representative of funding body(N=2), Operative manager (N=1), Representative of public

The Netherlands
Europeemployment service (N=1)
Academic (N=2), Trade unionist (N=1)
Trade unionist (N=2), Policy maker (N=1)

Total number of27expert interviews

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Table 2: Participant overview: narrative biographical interviews
Majority/
No. Code and name

Age Genderminority
ethnicity*

1
2
3
4

Class
background

Profession

DE01_Agnes
UK01_Radek
DE02_Dirk
DE03_Amina

30
44
41
30

F

Maj

Lower middle

Junior producer

M

Maj

Working class

EditorF

Min

Lower middle

5 DE04_Timo

42

M

Maj

Working class

Editor, journalist
Sound engineer,

6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

60
50
42
46
40
43
46
35
37
51
60
40
31
52
71
59
29
40
36
53

M

Maj

M

Maj

Working class
Lower middle

F
F
F

Maj
Maj
Min

Middle class
Lower middle
Working classF

Maj

Working class

MakeupM

Maj

Lower middle

Location manager

F
F

Min
Maj

Lower middle

Graphic designer

M

Maj

MiddleDirector

M
F
F
M
M

Maj
Maj
Min
Maj
Maj

MiddleMiddle class
Lower middle
Lower middle
Working class

Extra (actor)

UK02_Mike
DE05_BenjaminDE06_Nico
DE07_Sandra
DE08_Hannah
UK03_Jacinta
DE04_Penny
UK05_Liz
DE09_Frieder
UK06_Sean
UK07_Jake
DE10_Brianna
UK08_Zoe
DE11_Hanno
UK09_Peter
UK10_Chris
UK11_Anja
UK12_Terrie
UK13_Niall
UK14_Samcamera assistant
Camera operator

Set decorator

Camera assistant
Location scout
Sound technician

TV/Film

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Majority/
No. Code and name

Age Genderminority
ethnicity*

26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51

NL01_Alba
NL02_Francesco
SE01_Nadja
NL03_Anis
SE02_Anna
SE03_Fabiano
NL04_ Jasmin
SE04_Filip
SE05_Arianna
SE06_Isabelle
NL05_Leen
NL06_Jane
NL07_Alessandro
SE07_Jaime
SE08_Elias
NL08_Bart
NL09_Lisa
NL10_Mia
SE09_Hiroko
SE10_Iris
SE11_Sandra
SE12_Astrid
NL11_Dominika
NL12_Sara
SE13_Jon
SE14_Nikola

41
34
30
30
39
50
28
27
28
23
28
38
31
32
29
40
23
32
44
28
32
33
32
36
41
31

F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M

Maj

Class
background

Profession

Working class

Min
Lower middle
Maj
Min
DancerF
Middle
Maj
Dance
M
F
F
F

Maj
Maj
Min

Upper middle
Lower middle

Dancer/F
Maj

MiddleM
NB* Majority (usually White) / Minority (usually non-White) ethnicity

choreographer

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Valeria Pulignano et al.

TV/Film in Germany and the UK
Project work in TV and film means a series of temporary jobs all over the world,
ranging from a day to a few months, with no ‘occupational’ income in between.
‘Jumping from project to project,’ which may significantly differ in type, is oftenvery intensive (i.e. shifts usually up to fifteen hours or more), as several respondents indicate, and is punctuated by periods of no work, where people often suffer
the limits independent self-employment status impose when accessing the social
security system:
I’m lucky I don’t have a family to feed, so the money [I earn] is used to pay all
the tax, pension provision, which many of my colleagues don’t do, because they
say yes, how am I supposed to pay for it? (DE07_Sandra, 46, F, camera operator)
Everything shut down [due to Covid]. We were in freefall, it felt a little bit like youwere jumping out of a plane, oops. No parachute. And financially already if I don’t
get a phone call—I don’t work. I don’t have any unemployment benefit rights built
in the contracts that I have. Sometimes I don’t even have contracts. (UK06_Sean,
51, M, supervising location manager)

The uncertainty of funding requires the industry to adjust swiftly to the changing environment, without incurring ‘fixed’ costs. Doing project work means “tomake and to sell to be paid” (DE05_Ben), but “if there’s a way to not pay you, you
won’t get paid” (UK13_Niall, 36, M, location scout):
I did an internship and moved from Berlin to Hamburg. They [company] usedvolunteers a lot […]. Thanks to the editor, I started working as a researcher anda soundman. And then I was cameraman for very little [money]. I asked if they
had more for me. They said yes and then there was no end to it. I worked from
Monday to Friday in Hamburg, and on weekends I was in Berlin and then drove
there again. Later they offered me volunteer work again. (DE04_Timo, 42, M,
sound engineer and camera assistant)
Last year I did a prep for a job. And I said: “Look I want money to pay for it, you
can just give me a nice contract in the new year and I’m happy.” And then I got
the job and after three weeks they let me go because someone said that I was too
expensive. (UK13_Niall, 36, M, location scout)

Workers report being easily replaced, as the number of people “creating the magic” (DE04_Timo) is always higher than the number of jobs available. Camera op-

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erators in Germany report that their fees have not changed since the mid-1990s.
Having a low wage and irregular hours in expensive cities like London or Berlin
is difficult for those with fewer resources at their disposal. Zoe, a white workingclass woman, who cannot rely on family resources, is constrained because of“working in a pub during the weekends” to enable “trying to get either work
experience or […] paid work in anything to do with film and TV during theweek” (UK08_Zoe). Women and men from a working-class background of all
ethnicities struggle to “make ends meet” (DE02_Dirk) and to access high-quality
jobs. This contrasts with white middle-class and upper-middle class women andmen entering the industry, who often come from “a film family” (DE06_Nico)and therefore have resources and contacts at their disposal (UK10_Chris). Class
background can also be relevant in the event of workplace conflict. We interviewed Ben (DE05), a white working-class camera operator, who was informally“blacklisted” for filing a court case against a production company paying low
rates and insisting on classifying crew as self-employed, despite being dependent on the organisation for assignment of tasks and supervision. After the case(which he lost), Ben found it difficult to get hired, having been stigmatised as “atroublemaker,” and he did not have any financial buffers.
Having contacts with the right directors and producers “who run the show”(UK07_Jake) is crucial, since they place people in project departments. Terrie, aworking-class woman of mixed African-Caribbean heritage, identified the “inner circles” of power in the industry:
It’s like concentric rings, so in the middle you have family members and thenit goes out, friends, acquaintances. A lot of people that sort of sit within thosecircles tend to be private or public school educated, they tend to be male, white
Anglo-Saxon Protestants. They tend to be out of a particular type of mould, whichis quite identifiable, it’s a type [laughing]. (UK12_Terrie, 41, F, camera assistant)Terrie’s narrative reflects the industry structure in Britain, where, in contrast
to state-backed policy aimed at “promoting a more diverse workforce” (Ofcom 2019), representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic people fell from
12% in 2009 to 5.3% in 2012 (Creative Skillset 2013) and 4.2% in 2018 (Brook,
O’Brien and Taylor 2018). Moreover, high-status creative roles are mainly white,
middle-class and male-dominated (ScreenSkills 2019). Between 1999 and 2003,
fewer than 15% of films were credited to a female screenwriter (Sinclair, Pollard and Wolfe 2006), and only 14% of directors and screenwriters in 2012/2013
were women (Newsinger and Presence 2018). Similarly, in Germany between
2009 and 2013, women directed 22% of films, fewer than 9% were produced
by women and only 14% of scripts were written solely by women (Loist and132

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Prommer 2019). Illustrating Wright’s (1997) gender sorting into class locations,the UK film industry largely consists of “women in hair, makeup, costume andprops, and men in camera, sound and directing” (UK12_Terrie), and similarly
in Germany:In the camera department, there’s one woman to ten men. Maybe even one intwenty. Because you move many kilos a day […] That’s a woman’s constitution,
you have to be on your toes, you have to be fast and for many it is simply too much[…] I have always enjoyed working with female colleagues. Well, not as camerawomen. In other areas such as equipment, props, decoration. (DE11_Hanno, 52,
M, head of camera department)‘A Culture of Recommendations’Networks decide “who works, how, where, and the pay” (UK11_Anja). Thus, project workers are recruited, tried and tested by networks, and if the (individualised,unmonitored) assessment is positive, they are recommended for new projects. Interviewees refer to it as “a culture of recommendations” (UK12_Terrie) or “referralmarketing” (DE11_Hanno). This was confirmed by our expert interviewees andsummarised by a white lower-middle class female camera assistant: “it’s all about
who you know, not really what you know. It’s all about contacts” (UK11_Anja).
As lack of access to networks means less access to jobs, those different from theusual members of ‘instrumental’ networks (women, working-class and minority
ethnic people) struggle. They usually have “a mountain to climb” (UK02_Mike).
“It is important the network knows in advance who you are […] [I]t is crucial
within an industry where people need to know who they can trust and rely upon”(UK07_Jake). The network bears the risk as it is “primarily responsible for theaccomplishment of the project’s goals, in accordance with broadcasting funders’requests” (UK07_Jake), so seeks to counterbalance the risk of “having to do a lot
with not much” typical of an industry featuring fragmentation and uncertainty(UK07_Jake). Network gatekeepers are aware their reputation (symbolic capital)
is at stake and that they are expected to help police quality and deadlines. Networks become like “a family and once you are part of the family, you get called[for jobs] because you’re one of them” (DE09_Frieder).
The privilege of particular in-groups is reinforced and maintained over timethrough active (direct) and effective (indirect) discrimination. This particularly
applies to access to productions where symbolic capital is the highest—featurefilms and high-end TV series, which can compete for industry rewards (Academy Awards, BAFTAs).

“Know Where to Fish”133
I couldn’t enter these large feature films because I wasn’t in those circles. Everytime I asked and they didn’t directly know me, nothing would come back and one
time I even got an e-mail back saying: “Thanks very much but I will be going withmy tried and tested team.” (UK11_Anja, 29, F, camera assistant)“Those circles” (UK11_Anja) are virtually closed for outsiders as there are active strategies to secure the privilege of insiders. Several interviewees referred toprecarious, often unpaid, positions within the industry as frequently allocated to
women in ‘assistant’ positions. In Germany, female interviewees from a workingclass and lower-middle-class background spoke about being put into the roleof “Mädchen für alles” (a girl doing everything). In Britain, female interviewees
reported unequal treatment on the job; white, middle-class, better-connected
men have more opportunities to learn, while working-class and minority ethnic
women are hampered by auxiliary tasks in ‘service’ roles:
There were two of us but I had done three years of training so I was more experienced […] and I was tasked with looking after the DOP, the cinematographer.
[…] He refused to eat the catering that was provided. So, every day I had to go out
and get him his lunch with his driver and sometimes even prepare it for him […]And there were several other things I had to do, like buying him socks because
he forgot to put socks on one day […] I basically felt like a waitress […] And, ofcourse, the other trainee was where I wanted to sit really, right next to the camera.
(UK11_Anja, 29, F, camera assistant)

Even if women manage to reach parallel positions to those of men, their comments and requests are frequently ignored or rejected, which “makes it difficult
to do well the work they are supposed to do” (DE01_Agnes). They often encounter mistrust of their capacities, which hinders their performance:
The DOP [director of photography] was very reluctant to let me do certain typesof things. And because he didn’t have a lot of trust in me, I became more nervous
around him. And as you perform worse, it justifies their opinion of you. (UK11_
Anja, 29, F, camera assistant)Highlighting the homophilous nature of networks, women often only discover
structural inequalities when they start talking to men working in other, maledominated, departments:
Men hang out more with men, and women with women. […] [W]omen are quite
open about their rates, so we discuss what we’re earning, seeing quite similar

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Valeria Pulignano et al.
amounts. And only men who are my very close friends can say: “I’m earning this.”And I’m like “What? How are you earning that much money?,” and they are like“Oh all the guys are,” “What?!” (UK08_Zoe, 31, F, graphic designer)

However, network processes are sometimes mediated at other levels. In German
public broadcasting, project workers are offered an ‘employee-like freelancer’(feste Freie Mitarbeiter) employment status, regulated by collective bargaining.
Accordingly, project workers enjoy social benefits (i.e. annual and sick leave andpension schemes) (Herkel 2019) and longer-term contracts provide more regular work and remuneration. The feste Freie status provides a path, from standard
freelancing to more protected freelancing to permanent employment, without
over-reliance on homophilous networks. This enables female workers in Germany to reduce their dependence and thus potentially change the compositionof networks in core jobs. Amina, a working-class woman of Moroccan origin,has worked for several years as feste Freie’ for a public broadcaster in Germany:
Next year I’ll have an open-ended contract. After ten years [of feste Freie] you areautomatically a permanent employee. […] [B]y being a feste Freie you have social
security and discretion. (DE03_Amina, 30, F, editor)

There is no comparable employment security for freelancers in the UK and no
British female interviewees reported any such discretion, which may also help
explain why and how the domination of white middle-class men in core positions is reproduced.

Dance in Sweden and the Netherlands
Dancers construct careers as a patchwork of projects, following their passion for“a beautiful art, which is awfully structured” (NL12_Sara). Respondents describe
project work as “doing gigs here and there” (NL10_Mia), ranging from music videos, through corporate or cultural events, to working in clubs, where the work is
informal and pay is difficult to negotiate. “Body work”—as Anis (NL03) describes
dance—requires “a long and ongoing investment in physical capital,” which is theresult of “discipline, ongoing exercise and continuous diet you learn since you are achild” (NL03_Anis). Our respondents told us that working-class children normally
do not enter ballet schools due to the investment needed, in fees and costs related
to specialist clothing. In the exceptional cases when they do become dancers, theyrecognise the extent of family effort it required: “I remember my parents counting
every cent to pay for the school” (NL01_Alba, 41, F, dancer). Further, after gradua-

“Know Where to Fish”135

tion, entry to the core labour market involves participating in numerous workshops,
often led by well-known coaches (dominant network gatekeepers), and multiple auditions, with family covering fees and travel costs. Thus, while middle-class dancers
are given many opportunities to sell ‘body work,’ working-class dancers may only
have one chance or may be pushed away from dancing altogether: “We stayed in
London, which was great, but it cost a ton of money” (NL06_Jane, 38, F, dancer).
However, there are national context mediators. Both countries have publicly
funded dance organisations, offering a mix of permanent and dependent projectwork employment. In Sweden, “competitive commodification”—as Laermans(2015) describes it—is ameliorated on acceptance by this type of organisation as
dancers get a public grant, providing regular income. Places are limited; there isfierce competition to enter the “protected dance shells” (NLEX02) and applicantscannot easily reach these desirable positions (cf. “thousand for one place only,”
SE12_Astrid). Unlike the Netherlands, however, in Sweden an equal number ofmale and female dancers are recruited annually to publicly funded dance organisations, which stems from the state’s gender equality policy and the need to haveenough female and male dancers to fill the roles in classical ballet. This appears
equitable, yet the population of women applicants is far greater. In both countries, male dancers are “still seen as holy grails” (SE10_Iris) and a larger proportion of female dancers are cut off from potential stable employment.
Those who do not enter compete for project work, largely in private organisations. In the Netherlands, competitive commodification fosters “permanent rivalry” (NL01_Alba). Dancers constantly need to prove themselves, as “even after
20 years, when a new choreographer comes in, I still have to audition” (NL01_
Alba, 41, F, dancer). Economic capital allows capacity to cope with these employment conditions: in Sweden almost 52% of those entering the industry have parents with high-level education, and family resources can make all the differences
to survival and progress. It includes both the family of origin—“my parents had
a lot of money saved for me, which I used” (SE09_Hiroko, 44, F, dancer/choreographer)—and partners—“I was lucky I met my husband, financially it was ahuge relief ” (NL06_Jane, 38, F, dancer). People who cannot rely on family or apartner’s wealth must do extensive ‘side’ jobs, which hinders vital daily training
and, longer term, prevents self-promotion in the artistic field, hindering crucial
access to networking: “Dance jobs are not good for class travellers” (SEEX01).

‘An Economy of Invitations’To participate in auditions, dancers need to register by paying a fee and they alsoneed to travel. Mitigation of precarity is available in Sweden, where the Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmed) offers “reimbursement for travel costs

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associated to the participation of auditions” (SEEX03). There is no equivalent
support from the Dutch state authorities and working-class project workers reported being pushed towards exhausting work patterns, “applying for everything
there is” (NL10_Mia, 32, F, dancer/choreographer) and often unable to afford
attendance at auditions. Further, dancers need to be invited to audition. Those
who get invited via networks have higher chances of audition success. SEEX08
describes networks as the “economy of invitation.” All parties are aware of thisprocess, including the dancers themselves: “you can always go to auditions, but
your chances are very small if you don’t know anybody there” (NL03_Anis, 30,
F, dancer). In the Netherlands, white middle- and upper-class male choreographers and directors occupy key positions in networks and several respondents
reported that in ballet, these gatekeepers decide who to admit in accordancewith the narrowly defined “ideal of the bodily beauty,” that is “white female andmale dancers” (NL01_Alba). Thus, minority-ethnic dancers are often excluded
because they are associated with a devalued form of embodiment. In Swedishballet, although being a white middle- and upper-class man can also be an advantage, almost 70% of choreographers in key positions in networks are women(Konstnärsnamnden 2016). Moreover, the number of lower-middle-class dancers and choreographers in Sweden has increased from 841 in 2007 to 1,032 in2014 (Flisbäck 2014; Konstnärsnamnden 2016). Both minority-ethnic and white
working-class female dancers usually rely on them for being invited to audition,
which potentially implies broadening of the ‘economy of invitations’ to othersocial groups:
We have one member whose mother works at the opera, so she helped us sew
some costumes […] [M]y boyfriend’s is a photographer, so we’ve collected favours
here and there. (SE06_Isabelle, 23, F, dancer)

The dominant pattern, however, is of pressure for quick and reliable selection,
meaning that invited dancers are “tried and tested” or have strong recommendations coming from “trusted” colleagues. According to dancers, networks “knowwhere to fish” and therefore they can “make and break careers” (NL09_Lisa, 23,
F, dancer). Starting from schools and dance academies, being well connected
provides visibility in a large pool, and being connected to established figures offers special treatment:
My parents come from the dance world. So I had a huge advantage and opportunity to have some private auditions […] My parents worked here in the theatre,
so I had access to the physiotherapist and to the workout studio. And so many
choreographers already knew me since I was a kid. (NL09_Lisa, 23, F, dancer)

“Know Where to Fish”137
One of my friends was chosen to be a choreographer and I remember him choosing me. That was just like really manipulative but it ended up happening that I had
the job. (NL06_Jane, 38, F, dancer)

Project work relies on such homophilous networks. Entering, leaving and re-entering the industry necessitates reliance on networks for access: “you get jobs because people know they can rely on you and therefore they keep recommendingyou” (SE13_Jon). Active networking includes participation in workshops led byrenowned coaches and in international dance competitions, as well as attendanceat festivals and galas, which presupposes invitation by someone already ‘inside’:
You learn you always have to network, always talk to people or go to shows andalways talk to your colleagues and invite them to what you do. And go to shows,talk to the choreographers, go to workshops, you need to do it all. (NL03_Anis)

The embedded transfer of risk—from ultimate employing organisation to individual worker—is evident.
Networks are homophilous because they actively rely on those they ‘recognise’ (symbolic capital), while actively excluding those not in possession of theright (gendered, racialised) symbolic capital. They also exclude inactively, in not
being able to ‘see’ others whose lack of capital means they do not even makeit into the orbit of the network. The result is effective discrimination throughsorting practices, reinforcing gendered, racialised, classed precarity. This is because working-class women, who engage early in second jobs, are those whoare primarily unrecognised by networks—partly because women comprise themajority of dancers and partly because they combine irregular dance gigs withother sources of income in their side jobs (e.g. in retail, hospitality, care work,cleaning). This leads to overwork and underpay, as 60–80 hour working weeks
still barely exceed the minimum wage. More generally, male advantage was also
acknowledged by middle- and upper-class men:
If you are a good and a well-resourced male dancer you are definitely luckier than
if you are a good female well-resourced dancer, being a man in the dance world isalways like you’re more important. (NL07_Alessandro, 31, M, dancer)

Discussion and Conclusions
We developed a theoretical approach to precarity based on the practices of project networks, which constitute the organising principles of project work within

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creative industries. In doing so, we also complement current understanding ofclassed and gendered processes of precarity within creative industries (Dean2008; Friedman, O’Brien and Laurison 2017) by suggesting that contemporaryclass perceptions which emerge through the experience of precarity rely fundamentally on the feeling of not being connected—palpable in the case of performing artists, and this may be extrapolated to representations of class in the arts. We
reveal all this by examining how and under which conditions project networks
can affect discriminatory dynamics in worker precarity. Our approach is distinctive and it adds to the contributions in Part 2 of this volume on “Personalising
Class: Individuals and Collectives” in two ways.
First, it reveals in the capital–labour relationship the core of the tension between the more individual experiences of discrimination and the shared socioeconomic relations and interests that underpin collective class identities. It doesso by pointing to commodification in project work as a key driver for the discriminatory dynamics we observe. Our findings provide further insight into how networks seek to manage the risk exerted by (de)commodification pressures within
industry (and country) contexts. In so doing, our analysis also extends existingstudies in the field of the sociology of work and employment (e.g. Greer, Salamuk and Umney 2019) by indicating networks, with their dominant gatekeepers,
as the crucial form of ‘transaction organiser’ in creative industries. As we empirically show, this contributes to shaping precarity in that risks are not only transferred from employing organisations to workers, but that networks function as
agents of capital in allocation of resources, and maintain the gendered, racialised
inequalities that shape employing organisations. Thus, we explain how networks
become precarity organisers by specifying the homophilic (mis)recognition ofsymbolic capital in their practices. These practices underpin commodification inproject work, which homophily shapes. Hence, our results reveal the importanceof commodification in project work for understanding how precarity is generated and sustained by the homophilic nature of networks’ cultural processes. We
argue that how, and how far, project networks contribute to enhancing or reducing opportunities (Tilly 1998) that people derive from ‘possession’ of resources(‘symbolic capital’: Bourdieu 1986), depends on relationships embedded into industry (and country) structures (facilitating gendered sorting into class locations:Wright 1997). Sydow, Lindkvist and DeFillippi (2014) pointed to embeddedness
as relevant to project-based organisations and our study confirms and extends
this significance in illustrating how embeddedness accounts for project networks
sustaining advantages through creating opportunities for some, while reducing
them for others, who will likely do more irregular, poor-quality project work andover shorter careers. In particular, we explain how commodification results fromproject networks pragmatically retaining control over economic and symbolic

“Know Where to Fish”139

resources (e.g. public subsidies and early bodily investment) available within theindustry (and country) to enable the project. Thus responsibility and control
properties are concentrated within the network operating in accordance with therequirements of powerful funding agents.
Recalling our discussion of Tilly (1998) and Wright (1997) above—and thisis the second way we see distinctiveness in our work—our findings point to thepractice of ‘sorting’ as accounting for how the operations of project networks
reproduce advantage and disadvantage by opening and closing opportunities at
the intersection of gender and class within different industries and countries. We
identify the homophilic nature of project network practices and show they workfor the networks’ internal purposes, creating and maintaining these networks
as effective and powerful. In particular, we contend that structures are criticalto shaping the risks which in turn account for the greater or lesser importanceof the homophilous networks in generating precarity. Varieties of industry- andcountry-based industrial funding arrangements, de-regulation and broader access to social security provision are all relevant to how risk is redistributed. As
such, these arrangements reflect the role of the state as ‘silent actor’ contributing
to or mitigating (the ‘power’ of) homophily. This is because disadvantage is perpetuated at the point of assessment by homophilous networks but also beforehand, in that many creative workers do not even become visible to networks: therisk shifted onto them is too great a constraint.
Our comparative analysis shows that sorting can take different forms depending on industry structure. It can channel people on entrance to the industry (primarily TV/film) or it can make or break opportunities and careers for people
within the industry (primarily dance). First, within TV/film, where ‘learning
while doing’ is prevalent: in UK TV/film, the presence of private capital as a primary source of financing within vertically disintegrated systems of production
account for the powerful role of project networks; in Germany, the organising ofcontent production within a ‘dual system’ distributes power to networks. In bothcases, recruitment practices follow the ‘culture of recommendations’ to ensure
projects can deliver in accordance with the artistic and economic expectations ofcommissioning broadcasters. Homophily in networks produces outcomes thatmeet these expectations and maintains them as powerful. Accordingly, womentend to be concentrated in jobs traditionally associated with expectations of theirgender (Alvesson and Billing 2009), unless they resemble the same racialised
attributes of class (usually white and middle- and upper-class) of those of the
network. Thus, their symbolic capital reflects the male elite. However, in German
public broadcasting, employment protection can mitigate the effects of homophily in networks. The stability deriving from the ‘employee-like freelancer’ (feste
Freie Mitarbeiter) contract provides more regular work and remuneration, which

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reduces dependency on networks for access to jobs. At the same time, under lesspressure for cost-efficiency, and (de-)commodification in project work throughrelatively generous public resources, the capacity of networks to open or close
opportunities is—slightly—reduced. The possession of economic capital, necessary to teach children how to keep the body ready to work at any time, is thecondition underpinning entrance to dance and then maintaining that readiness.
Findings showed that dancers construct their careers as a ‘patchwork’ by moving between organisations, countries and choreographers, and between dancetechniques and styles. At the same time, resources are linked to personal connections. Networks organise accomplishment of the project’s goals by establishing
relationships with dancers who can be ‘trusted’ because they possess the greatest economic resources to guarantee long-term, ongoing investment in physicalcapital, or who are recommended by a dominant actor in the field (such as a relative who has already worked in dance). Economic capital and the trust it generates nurture an ‘economy of invitation’ which privileges upper- and middle-classpeople in audition participation in both Sweden and the Netherlands. We noted
an increase in participation by non-privileged groups in Sweden, working on
projects with gatekeepers from similar backgrounds, confirming that networks
operate in a homophilic way, in that different network members can provide
different types of access to resources. Conversely, white middle- and upper-classmale choreographers and artistic directors dominate key positions in networks
in the Netherlands and largely decide who to admit in accordance with possession of cultural capital: the narrowly defined bodily idea of white female andmale dancers. Overall, this reveals some difference in how project networks
function as a device for gendered precarity within dance organisations in bothcountries. As we saw, notwithstanding gender-equal numbers admitted to someSwedish dance companies, a far greater proportion of women are disadvantaged.
However, for those who do enter, public grants in Sweden (dis)embed projectwork from the market-based relationships of production by providing less unstable social conditions within the industry. In contrast, in the Netherlands, both
female and male lower-middle-class and working-class dancers report regular
exclusion from auditions by project networks who do not consider them asmeeting their preferences (see Figure 1).

“Know Where to Fish”141

Gender/class segmentation in precarious/sidejobs (UK/DE). Mitigating effects in publicbroadcasting (Feste Freie Mitarbeiter) (DE).

People channelled, primarily at
entrance, by dominant gatekeepers
in line with symbolic

Project delivery, ‘learning by doing’
recommendations (UK/DE)

Private capital financing (UK);
Public/private ‘dual system’

TV/Film
NETWORKS: Homophily&
Transaction
Sorting
Organisers Gendered
precarity

Risk
minimisation

Dance

Commodificationin Project Work

Competition for public funding (NL);
Economic strains & pressure on
public subsidies (SW)

Project delivery, prior and ongoinginvestment in ‘bodywork’,recommendations (SW/NL)

Access opportunities mediatedby radicalised gender andclass backgrounds

Access to auditions and higher statusprojects based on cultural and social
capital enabled by economic capital(SW/NL); mitigation through publicgrants (SW)

Figure 1: Commodification of project work and networks as ‘transaction organisers’
generating class and gender precarity

Potential
workers
invisible
tonetworks

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Valeria Pulignano et al.

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PART 3

NARRATING CLASS:VOICE AND BELONGING3.1
Double(ing) Voices
Narrating Precarious Class Status and Class Identities
Sula Textor

You said it would be better here.
I know.
It’s not.
No.
Megan Gail Coles (2019, 83–84)

Canadian author Megan Gail Coles’ novel Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club (2019) narrates one day in the lives of its characters, who are allconnected by one place: the restaurant where most of them work and others
come to enjoy lunch or dinner. At the centre of this net of characters is Iris. She
is a twenty-nine-year-old art graduate with an underprivileged background; she
had hopes for a better future when, together with her childhood friend Olive,
she left her rural home to come to the city; she hoped to escape the social worldof her upbringing, a world marked by poverty and violence. But: “No,” nothing“is better here,” she remembers admitting to Olive. After what looked like thepromising start of an upward social journey, she now works as a waitress with nomeans to improve her situation and is more vulnerable than ever.
It would be easy to imagine Iris being the first-person narrator of her own
story, had her social journey been successful. She seems to be well read in sociology, among other things, and might be able to write an insightful autobiographical text about her authentic (although, of course, fictitious) experience of themechanisms of social reproduction from the perspective of one who escaped, theexception to the rule. But Iris is no exception. Her situation is one of precarity;
after work she does not have the energy to work on her paintings anymore, andwe can hardly imagine her writing anything at all, let alone a novel.
And thus, the novel in which her story is told is nothing like the sociologicallyinformed autobiographical texts which, following the success of Édouard Louis’
debut novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014) and the widespread reception

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of Didier Eribon’s Retour à Reims (2009), have served as catalysts for the reemergence of ‘class’ as a category in literary as well as socio-political discourses(see e.g. Schaub 2020, 64) and, by providing a set of recurring narratives and narrative strategies, have been giving shape to these discourses since then—mostly
in France and Germany, but also internationally.
Small Game Hunting is not an autobiographical text; it does not have a firstperson narrator, nor even a tangible narrator-figure at all, but a mere narrating
voice voicing the characters’ thoughts, fluidly shifting from one perspective toanother. The novel is not narrated in retrospective, but in the present tense, and‘class’ as a concept is almost completely absent from the characters’ minds. Yet
it is equally precise and insightful, although less explicit, in its analysis of classrelations, social inequality, of precarity and the multiple ways in which forms ofdomination and discrimination intersect. By not focusing on one perspective but
lending a voice to all the characters without reinstating a sovereign omniscientor first-person narrator, the heterogeneity of what could at first glance be perceived as a coherent social class is made apparent: their respective roles in the intricately intersectional structure of relations of power, domination and violence
become tangible as these structures are perpetually being (re)produced in theirinteraction. My analysis of Coles’ novel will focus on its narrative voice, which,
I will argue, offers in many respects a more adequate—aesthetically and politically—way of narrating forms of precarious class positions and ‘class struggle’in contemporary neoliberal capitalism, or at least a narrative countermodel towhat is probably no longer merely a “genre-in-the-making”: autosociobiography(Ernst 2020, 80; Blome, Lammers and Seidel 2022, 1).
As my analysis of Coles’ novel stems from and is shaped by an uneasinesswith the dominance of autosociobiographical narratives in and beyond literary
discourse, it is embedded in some reflections on this uneasiness and the questions that arise from it. This somewhat unorthodox juxtaposition of the paradigmatic mode of narrating class identity in the twenty-first century with a recent
example of a different narrative approach to many similar questions shows thatdifferent narrative modes have pervasive implications for the representation ofclass-related experiences, which, whether they are labelled as fiction or not, comment on contemporary conditions. Nevertheless, a common aspect of narrating
precarious class status and identity also emerges from this juxtaposition: formsof narrative hybridity.

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Potentials and Pitfalls of AutosociobiographicalTransclasse Narratives
Who Speaks? In Whose Language? And to Whom?
The texts which belong to what is about to or already has become the genre fortalking about class share: (a) an interest in the analysis and depiction of classrelations, classist discrimination and the role of socio-economic factors in multilayered forms of domination; (b) the theme of the social climber; (c) the combination of literary forms of writing with sociological or sociologically informed
analyses; and (d) a set of specific “narrative patterns”1 (Blome 2020, 545)—a firstperson narrator who looks back on their working-class origins and retrospectively tells the story of their economic and social advancement. By drawing onsociological knowledge (Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘social space,’ ‘social reproduction’ and ‘(split) habitus,’ etc. seem to be almost omnipresent), the narratorsof autosociobiographical texts objectify and validate their individual experience
as a transindividual phenomenon (cf. Blome, Lammers and Seidel 2022, 3f.),
while at the same time claiming its authenticity2 by choosing an autobiographical or at least autofictional mode of writing.
As more and more autosociobiographical texts are being written and read, thegenre contributes to the increasing visibility and an increasingly heterogenous
representation of working-class positions and identities (cf. for example Schaub
in this volume). But it also prevents other forms of narrative reconsiderationsof class structures from gaining attention as such; in the case of Small Game
Hunting, for instance, class-related aspects are often absent from discussions of
the novel, even though they are one of the novel’s central themes. The immense
popularity of the genre also raises questions about the “adequacy” of these narratives with regard to their “Sprecher:innenposition,” the position from which they
speak (Blome 2020, 567; Blome, Lammers and Seidel 2022, 6): their narrators
look back at their working-class origin from a privileged position and are able topublicly write about their experience only because of the access to language anddiscourse this position provides them with (cf. Blome 2020, 569–570). Furthermore, these texts mainly address an equally privileged readership and often also
perform a legitimisation of their authors’ acquired class status. Many authors ofautosociobiographical texts are aware of those questions. Annie Ernaux for example famously said in an interview with sociologist Isabelle Charpentier (2005):
J’ai réfléchi alors à ma position d’écrivain-narratrice transfuge, issue du mondedominé mais appartenant maintenant au monde dominant, […] alors que leslecteurs appartiennent, eux, au monde dominant […] C’est vrai que c’est toute152Sul a Textor
l’ambiguïté de la posture des autobiographies littéraires “d’en bas”… puisque précisément, elles émanent de gens qui en sont sortis. Alors que la langue, l’écriture,le langage, ce sont les ressources et les instruments de la culture dominante.3(167–168)

In answer to this “ambiguity,” Ernaux develops what she calls “l’écriture de ladistance” (“writing of the distance”), an objectifying writing style without any
form of judgement, she claims, in which she amalgamates the language spoken
by her parents and grandparents as she remembers it with “classic” syntax andvocabulary (ibid.; cf. ibid., 167–169). There is an element of hybridisation in thistechnique, on which other authors of autosociobiographical texts draw in theirwriting as well. However, this form of hybridity remains rudimentary in firstperson narration, as the narrative discourse is stabilised and integrated by thevoice of the narrator. Different worlds may resonate in the words we read, but thenarration is that of one voice only.

Transclasse Narratives and Working-Class Nostalgia
As is implicit in this quotation from Ernaux, autosociobiographical narratives ofthe lives of the social climbers, the transfuges de classe (“class defectors”), rely on(the assumption of) clear-cut class divisions and—the common French term todesignate subjects of upward social mobility speaks for itself in this respect—anessentialist concept of class identity with moral undertones. This might seem little surprising given the fact that autosociobiographies narrate “class relations interms of the relations between generations” (Blome 2020, 545). Still, it may seemnostalgic that prototypical imaginings of the working class of past generations
serve as a constant point of reference when narrating transclasse experience ofthe mechanics of social reproduction and the loss of stable class identities, of being caught in a sort of social ‘in-between space’ (cf. Blome, Lammers and Seidel
2022, 10; Jaquet 2018, 138–139).
A nostalgia for prototypical working-class subjects and realities is not only
perceivable in recent literary and in fact other cultural spheres of production,
but also in political rhetoric, as well as political and economic theory. Referring
to an essay by Angela McRobbie, Emily Hogg (2021) argues for example that“[c]entring class identity and the site of the workplace as the foundations of a
new radical politics […] indicates a nostalgia for older forms of masculinized industry and obscures other locations for the development of political consciousness and collective struggle” (6). McRobbie (2010) herself calls for a “different
kind of thinking about class, one which focuses on this twilight status” (61),and similarly, Guy Standing (2011) argues that while past generations “could

Double(ing) Voices153

describe themselves in class terms, and others would recognize them in thoseterms,” today those terms “are little more than evocative labels” (8). Emily Hogg
(2021) analyses different “aesthetic strategies” of literary texts dealing with precarity in the neoliberal present and observes that in these texts, “it is formal andaesthetic undecidability, the resistance to conventional categories, that allows
artistic work to challenge established norms” (13). In Megan Gail Coles’ novel
Small Game Hunting, these aesthetic strategies centre around forms of hybridisation, a much more dynamic form of narrative hybridity than can be perceived
in autosociobiographical first-person narrative: a hybrid narrating voice that is
corrosive to the narratological category of voice itself and allows for the novel todepict precarity, unstable class identities and social injustice not from a stable,
omniscient or first-person perspective, but as it is produced and reproduced in
the structural relations between and interactions of the characters themselves.

Transclasse Narratives and Meritocratic Ideology
In order to avoid the pejorative term transfuge de classe to designate the figureof the social climber in autosociobiographical narratives, that is, these texts’ narrators, Chantal Jaquet has coined the term transclasse. In her book Les trans­
classes ou la non-reproduction she sketches a theory of social non-reproduction
from a socio-philosophical perspective, analysing the causes and the political,
economic, social and emotional preconditions of transclasse biographies (Part I)
as well as what she calls the “complexion” of transclasse subjects (Part II). Heranalysis relies heavily on readings of literary texts, that is, fictional or autobiographical narrativisations of transclasse experiences, from Stendhal’s Le Rouge etle noir (1830) to Annie Ernaux’s La Place (1983) and La Honte (1987), and Didier
Eribon’s Retour à Reims. Interestingly, it is not entirely clear why. She says that
she makes use of these literary texts as “instruments of thought” (2018, 24–25).
However, there is a blind spot in her approach, as she completely overlooks the
specifically literary and aesthetic qualities of these text and offers a merely thematic reading.
Still, her discussion of these texts provides some interesting insights. Fromher reading of Stendhal and Ernaux she concludes that “non-reproduction is thecontinuation of reproduction by other means. The social order is preserved by
the expulsion of an element that threatens it, that introduces disorder” (ibid., 80).
That is, transclasse narratives do not challenge the mechanisms of domination
along the lines of class hierarchies, they even prove to be indicative of “ideological constructs of a society that wants to see itself as fundamentally democratic,
in which individual ambition above all determines social mobility” (Spoerhase
2018, 233). This arouses the suspicion that these narratives’ success might in154Sul a Textor

part be due to the fact that they appeal to meritocratic ideas, which subverts thegenre’s potential for shedding a critical light on the mechanisms of meritocracy
itself.

Class-Passing, Hybridity and MimicryIn the second part of her essay, Jaquet analyses what she refers to as the “complexion” of transclasse subjects, using this term to criticise the socio-philosophicalconcept of the ‘person’ (cf. Spoerhase 2018, 235). The transclasse is, Jaquet claims
un être de métamorphose, de sorte que l’on peut non seulement se demander cequi subsiste du moi ancien mais si l’idée d’un moi identique à lui-même malgré
les changements ne perd pas toute pertinence.4 (2014, 106)

At first, she refers to the transclasses’ social transformation as a “mimesis” (ibid.,40). Later on, however, she describes the transition from one class position toanother as an act of “passing,” that is, to pass as “a member of a social group otherthan his or her own” (ibid., 122). I would suggest that this “passing” is in fact
more an act of mimicry than a simple mimesis. It is a subaltern subject’s imitation,or mimicking, of a hegemonic subject position—her class position.
In reference to colonial discourses, Homi K. Bhabha (1984) analyses mimicry
as an ambiguous discursive figure destabilising symbolic-hierarchical relations.
Effective colonial authority, he argues, depends upon a “reformed, recognizable
Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (126). The
colonised subject’s imitation of the coloniser seems to confirm the coloniser’s
authority. However, as the imitation is always only partially unsuccessful, it remains recognisable as an imitation—which is where Bhabha locates a subversive
potential:
mimicry stricken by an indeterminacy: mimicry emerges as the representation ofa difference that is itself a process of disavowal. Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline, which“appropriates” the Other as it visualizes power. (ibid.; emphasis added)

The same holds true for the passing of transclasse subjects. Jaquet (2018) remarksthat there remains a slight “delay” in their reactions, in their observations of“the codes” of their surroundings (144) and thus their imperfect metamorphosis
potentially uncovers or hints at the class-based hierarchies of social discourse.
Both Bhabha and Jaquet stress that the respective mimicry they describe is ac-

Double(ing) Voices155

companied by a “hybridization” (ibid., 137) of the ‘mimicking’ subject: “Mimicry
conceals no presence or identity behind its mask,” it “rearticulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence” (Bhabha 1984, 129).
Now to come back to the methodological blind spot in Jaquet’s essay: why literature? Why would literary texts prove to be productive for her reflections, notmerely as examples of transclasse biographical experience, but as aesthetic textures? Because they are—potentially—capable of depicting precisely this processof hybridisation and hybrid identities, I would suggest. Transclasse subjects havebecome not only socially and culturally, but also linguistically alienated fromtheir origins. And neither the language of their social origins nor the languageof literature and of academic discourses alone can be adequate to tell their story.
They are caught in an in-between space also linguistically, as can be seen in thequotation from Annie Ernaux above. Critics have commented upon narrativetechniques of navigating this linguistic, cultural and social in-betweenness. Alex
Demeulenaere (2021), in his analysis of “mechanisms of indirect speech” (149) intexts by Eribon, Louis and Nicolas Matthieu for example, has described “a fusion,a polyphonic clash between an elaborate writing style […] and a common, precarious voice in working-class speech” (ibid., 147). In these moments of polyphony, “two […] perspectives open up” and start to drift apart; “a position of double
belonging” is articulated (ibid.). Demeulenaere remarks that Eribon, Louis andMathieu “want to give a voice to those who are barely audible in public space” by“integrating working-class speech” into the “written, codified French language”
of literature (ibid.). However, as this intention of “giving a voice” and the act ofimitation itself remain perceivable in the narrative and thus hierarchise the voicesof the polyphony created, it does not come as a surprise that others read the same
aspects of the same texts (here Louis’ debut novel) as representing the working
class in a stereotypical way, that is, as a form of othering (cf. Lenz 2019).
The narrativisation of hybridity remains rudimentary in first-person narratives with claims to autobiographical authenticity, as—Spoerhase stresses exactly
this in his concluding remarks on Jaquet’s essay—these texts’ perspectives “often
remain obsessed with notions of identity that seek to substitute a harmonious
and closed self for the hybrid individual” (Spoerhase 2018, 252). Consequently,
he reads Jaquet’s essay as “a vehement plea not to pursue the identity imaginaries that fuel th[e] fear” of the hybridisation of identities (ibid., 253). But since,as I have argued, transclasse narratives in the autosociobiographical mode arein themselves a limiting factor for the hybridity of narrative representations ofprecarious class status and class identities, we need to look beyond examples ofthis popular ‘genre-in-the-making’—which brings me to my reading of Megan
Gale Coles’ Small Game Hunting.

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Megan Gail Coles’ Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward
Gun Club (2019)No, it is true, nothing is better for Iris and her childhood friend Olive in themedium-sized coastal town of St. John than it was in their rural homes in theimpoverished Bay Area of Newfoundland. Iris, who my reading will focus on,
grew up with her mother after her father left them, she “played pretend-poorer asa child to lessen the bleakness by comparison” (Coles 2019, 17). She is now in herlate twenties, has studied Art in Ontario but then was neither admitted to graduate school, nor could she find an adequate position in a gallery (ibid., 21). Still, sheneeds to pay off her student loan, which is why she works as a waitress at the Hazel, “a faux downhome cottage restaurant” (Trnka 2021, 141), but what she has left
at the end of the month is barely enough to pay her phone and electricity bill. She
is having an affair with the restaurant’s cook, John, whose socio-economical background is quite similar to hers, but who is married to George, daughter of one of
the most influential men in town and owner of the Hazel, and John will not leaveher for Iris. Even though working with him becomes more and more unbearable
for her as he is taking advantage of the power he has over her, emotionally and as
her superior at work, she is acutely aware that she must not lose this job.
Iris is at the centre of the novel’s net of characters, who are all connected
through one place: the Hazel. Over the course of the day on which the narrated
events take place, they all meet there, some as guests but most as staff members.5
It is Tuesday, a rather ordinary day, except for the fact that a blizzard is drawing
in and immobilises the city of St. John in the afternoon. All the characters, guests
as well as staff, are stuck at the Hazel, causing the usual conflicts between thecharacters to boil over—those between the employees and their superior, thosebetween male customers and the waitresses, between John and Iris, etc. For amoment it seems as if the situation will escalate into a fist-fight, but the arrivalof the most influential man in St. John, who is at the top of all the hierarchies
at play, prevents anything from happening. The staff will not have stood up forthemselves, they will not have acted as a group, her male co-workers will nothave defended Iris against the misogynist insults she has suffered, and this Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, ironically, will remain a rather normal, although abnormally depressing, day at work. Collective formation fails in the microcosm of theHazel, because, in short, “[i]n a social world of intersecting axes of oppression,[…] precariousness is […] not something we all experience to the same extent orin the same way” and precarity serves as “a means of control […] that systematically undermines workers’ capacity to rebel” (Hogg 2021, 7). This becomes very
tangible in the intricately structured narration of Megan Gail Coles’ novel, bothfor its characters and readers.

Double(ing) Voices157

In the course of the events of the day, the narrative voice moves between
the characters’ perspectives; we see them through the eyes of others as well as
through their own perception and thoughts. No ‘narrator’ emerges; everything is
narrated by a voice only perceivable as the voicing of other voices, the characters’
or those in their heads. We as readers are put “in the uncomfortable positionof occupying the minds of difficult characters, characters who are either being
exploited and abused due to their marginalized social positions, or in turn, theperspectives of their abusers” (Trnka 2021, 141). Thus, power relations become
tangible in a very material experience of a division into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ But whatmakes our position as readers even more uncomfortable is that these categories
remain fluid; two characters who are on one side in one situation will be divided
by different interests and positions in another.

Narrating the Precariat
Still, the focus is mainly on ‘us’ the staff, who (except for John) can all be described as belonging to what Guy Standing and others have termed the precariat:
they lack, among other things, “employment security” or “occupational security,”
they almost all have “a higher level of formal schooling than the level of the job
they are expected to perform” requires (Standing 2011, ix), and are humiliatedby the fact that their employer seems to want “undying thanks for just above
minimum wage” as she lectures them “while a pair of thousand-dollar dogs sleep
at her feet” (Coles 2019, 58). Standing stresses that “what distinguishes the precariat more than labour status is the lack of an occupational identity or narrative
they can give themselves” (Standing 2011, ix). This is poignantly illustrated whena woman at Iris’ table bluntly tells her:
You shouldn’t be a server.
I’m not.
Well. … but you are.
No. I’m not.
My dear girl, you are serving us right now.
I am.
Which means you are a server.
[…]
Iris doesn’t even know how she has come to serve.
Was it John? Or George? Her father? The past? Was it something lacking in herself? (Coles 2019, 223)

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Iris works as a waitress because she sees no other option, and she does not identify with her work. Her educational background and the hopes she had for her
future prevent her from having a stable professional identity working as a waitress and thus she does not feel like she is part of a coherent social group with her
co-workers.
In addition to this, Iris’ perspective is especially illustrative of the fact that ‘us’and ‘them’ in the microcosm of the Hazel are not stable categories. Although it is‘us’ serving ‘them,’ ‘us’ responsible for ‘their’ emotional well-being,6 ‘us’ who areperceived to stand at the socio-cultural periphery by ‘them,’ who consider themselves as the centre7—none of these ‘us’s or ‘them’s form a homogenous group,and none of them overlap completely, especially because of the unequally vulnerable, intersectional position of each individual within different ones of thosegroups. For instance, Iris’ male co-workers are just as unaware of Iris’ vulnerability to sexist discrimination and forms of sexual violence as is her boss, who,
although a woman herself, is in an independent position economically and has
never worked for anybody else; and while her colleagues might want to defend
her in some situations, they let her down in others for fear of losing their jobs.
Iris’ lack of occupational identity as well as the vulnerability and precarity ofher position at work are expressed by the use of theatrical metaphors. Her interaction with customers is repeatedly referred to as acting a part (cf. e.g. ibid., 223,225), which is corrosive to her sense of self, especially as she is aware of the factthat her part is written and attributed to her by others who are better off:But baygirls make great waitresses.
They’ve the ideal upbringing for the whole undertaking. Efficiency bred out ofnecessity centuries ago, refined by capital and industry. Taking too long resulting
in sickness and/or death. (ibid., 18)

While Iris does not identify as belonging to a specific social class, others who arewell above her in class terms do not hesitate to let her know where they thinkshe belongs. In the course of the plot, Iris repeatedly faces such attitudes, and as
she does, the narration exposes the (ideo)logical contradiction inherent in thisform of discrimination—that is, deterministically ascribing a certain position
to someone while at the same time holding them responsible for their socialand financial success. It is the novel’s narrative layering of different perspectives
that exposes self-righteous meritocratic attitudes like these where transclasse
first-person narrators are faced with an almost unavoidable, at least potential,
complicity with meritocratic ideas. And by presenting these different perspectives it also exposes the workings of social stereotypes and prevents stereotypicalrepresentations of its characters itself.

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Double(ing) Voices: The Subversive Potential of Narrative
Mimicry
The passage quoted here is narrated via Iris’ perspective. The bitter irony withwhich her thoughts are related in a form of free indirect discourse vents her
desperate powerlessness and her anger, which she cannot actually articulate inher position, because the consequences she would face are severe. What we hear/read is the narrator’s voice, who mimics the (unspoken) voices of the characters.
As the perspective shifts from one character’s mind to another, their perceptions
as well as their thoughts and their memories are amalgamated into a constantstream of free indirect discourse. That is, we always hear at least two voices at
once: that of the narrator and that of one of the characters. In this double voice,the proportion of the narrating voice varies. Sometimes, although rarely, it comments on the action in ways that seem almost entirely her own; sometimes it isbarely perceivable, for example when reporting dialogue between the characters.
As an effect of this narrative technique, different temporal layers, that is,the (characters’ perception of and thoughts on) events of the narrative present
and musings on past events and flashbacks triggered by the present, overlap.
This is the case in the passage quoted above. Iris, in the first of the novel’s threeparts (“Prep,” “Lunch” and “Dinner”) is on her way to work, and the train of her
thoughts runs on:
Hey misses! Hey girl! Hey Iris! Smile sure while you’re at it.
Would it kill Iris to smile while she hands them their food?
Put on a dress, look pretty, eat nothing, have no feelings, never complain. Whatelse can Iris do? Mississauga is calling. Welcome to the National Student Loan
Service Centre−
Ring! Ring! When her phone is actually connected.
The government wants their money back now!
Newfoundland has run out of fish/wood/oil and patience, again. Where did it all go?
Spent on coke and hookers no doubt. (ibid., 19)

Here, her memory of being bullied as a teenager and her anticipation of thoughts
about what customers will say/have said to her at work overlap, make her internally rage about what society expects of her, which then reminds her of thepressure to pay back her student loan. This overlapping is in part due to the factthat the novel as a whole is narrated in the present tense (except where characters remember past events). The narrative dynamic this creates is exemplary ofwhat Liam Connell (2021) considers “[t]he characteristic form of ” what he calls“the precarity novel”: “a novel that presents a seemingly permanent condition of160Sul a Textor

anticipation of unrealized crisis” (28). Similarly, Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen(2021) note that “the experience of being trapped in the present, as a temporal intermediary between a lost stable past and an uncertainly fluctuating future, is an
intrinsic part of precarious phenomenology and hence also of its literary representations” (8). Both Connell and Rys and Philipsen mention anxiety as (one of)the central affect(s) linked to this experience. This anxiety is linked to a “heightened risk of social regression,” as—contrary to what I have argued above in reference to transclasse narratives with a focus on the past and stable working-class
identities—“precarity […] foregrounds the idea that the boundaries between social strata have to be imagined as permeable” (Rys and Philipsen 2021, 6).
In this example of an exceptionally flexible form of free indirect discourse
from Iris’ thoughts on her way to work, echoes of a multitude of conflicting
voices can be heard: boys from Iris’ school, men in the street, customers at therestaurant, her parents or other relatives, ‘society’ in general, employees of the
National Student Loan Service—all blended with the angry snarling voice of thenarrator. Or is it Iris’ voice that, in her head, adds the aggressive, sarcastic tone?
“Would it kill Iris to smile while she hands them their food?” It is the narrator
who transforms a potential ‘It wouldn’t kill you to smile while…’ uttered by acustomer or maybe John or George into this biting comment by rendering it inindirect speech, of course. As the narrator accesses the sentence via Iris’ memory,
we are dealing with a double form of indirect speech here, but to what degree Iris’
version already contained a biting undertone remains uncertain.
If we try to locate Iris’ voice between this polyphony of other voices, between
the power they have over her and her will to rebel, it keeps slipping away. When
her train of thought comes back to rude comments by customers, we read: “Shecould talk back but has been socialized against it” (SGH, 20). Is this her own
thought? Or a comment by the narrator? Here too, as in many other cases, thequestion remains unresolvable. We can never be quite sure in what proportion
Iris is ‘talking back’ silently, and in what proportion the narrator is talking backfor her. Both voices are present, Iris’ mimicking the voices of those who havesome kind of power over her, thus exposing these underlying power structures,
as well as the narrator’s voice mimicking Iris’ thoughts. What we read is a double
voice at least.
This indeterminacy creates a tension that will build up in the course of thesecond part of the novel, when Iris is waiting on a table where the town’s mayor—ironically referred to not as Mayor, but “Major David” by the characters—ishaving lunch with a couple of colleagues and friends, including “Big George,” asthe Hazel’s staff call him, George’s father. The mayor arrives earlier than the restof the group, and when he does, we get his perspective first:

Double(ing) Voices161
Major David bets his skinny waitress does drugs. She’s certainly thin enough. Her
hollowed-out eyeballs suggest something quick. Cocaine. Probably buys a ball of
the coke and then complains about being paid minimum wage.
That’s why Major David doesn’t tip. (ibid., 128)

Iris is upset and exhausted after having a fight with John the night before andagain just after arriving at the Hazel. She needs to be on her guard, however,as the mayor projects onto her all that he despises. He feels that Iris is neglecting him while he waits for his company, he starts complaining and threatens to“bring this up with management” (ibid., 167). When the rest of the party has
arrived, they join him in complaining about Iris and condescendingly theorising
about “Baymen,” knowing that this also includes Iris, who is standing at theirtable. Iris knows who they are, she has waited on them before, but they do notremember her, and while she is getting angry, the focalisation subtly shifts to her
perspective.
Baymen, the Mayor says, giving them further permission to forge on.
[…]
Why is the rural Newfoundlander [insert anything here]?
The answer is poverty.
Why is the rural Newfoundlander [insert anything here]?
Still poverty.
Why is the rural Newfoundlander [insert anything here]?
POVERTY. POVERTY. POVERTY, FUCK!
And Iris will not discuss the shit her people buy. Buying lots of shit is not an argument against the kind of poverty they face but proof positive that they face it.
[…]
Fuck my life, Iris thinks […]. Just nod and pretend ignorance, baygirl.
Smile. Smile for your money. Or starve. (ibid., 206f.)

That she integrates fragments of the discourse that patronises her and stigmatises her people underlines how powerless she is in this situation, and why. Her
position is one that prevents her from speaking up for herself, from having avoice of her own; whatever she might say will be considered ‘talking back’ fromthe dominant perspective. She is well educated, she understands the sociological dimensions of her situation fully and precisely and would be able to explainthem accurately, were she the first-person narrator of her own story. It is crucial
for the intricate representation of her socio-economical position and all its consequences that the novel offers that she is not.

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Conclusion
Reading Megan Cail Coles’ Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Clubin the context of autosociobiographical accounts of class relations allows for a
critical reflection on contemporary narrativisation of transclasse identities andthe mechanisms of social reproduction. The novel’s narrative technique of fluidly
voicing and hybridising the characters’ perspectives allows for the intricate representation of a social web structured along lines of class where everyone’s identity and ability to voice their perspective depends on those of others, especiallyfor individuals with precarious class status and identity. From this vantage point,
it becomes visible how autosociobiographical narratives with their single voice
holding authority over narrative discourse conceal dependency and precarity on
the level of form. On the plot level, the fact that the protagonist does not escape
her social background and is unable to make a better life for herself sheds lighton the limitations of stories told by social climbers. Their narratives carry therisk of overemphasising upward social mobility, forgetting about the risk of falling in between the rungs of the social ladder.

Notes
1.
2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations into English are mine.
Cf. Blome 2020, 545 and Christoph Schaub’s contribution in this volume for his concept of a “poetics of authenticity.”“I then thought about my position of a transfuge writer-narrator who is originallyfrom the world of the dominated, but now belongs to the world of the dominant, […]whereas the readers belong to the dominant word […] It’s true, this is all the ambiguityof the position of literary autobiographies ‘from below’… precisely because they are thebiographies of those who have left this world. Whereas language, writing, speaking are
the resources and instruments of the dominant culture.”“[S]o much a metamorphic being that one cannot only ask oneself what remains of theold Self, but also whether the idea of a Self remaining identical with itself despite allchanges does not lose its plausibility altogether.”
The Hazel thus functions as a sort of “microcosm,” just like the hotel in Maria Leitner’s
novel Hotel Amerika discussed by Stephanie Marx (2021). Both novels analyse the political realities of their time in a specific context (Leitner’s novel is set in New York in
the 1920s) and make use of the microcosm of the hotel and the restaurant respectively
to show how precarious working conditions function to prevent effective protest.
In his essay on James Kelman’s fiction, Mathies Aarhus (2021) analyses what he calls “theaffects of class,” that is, the (narrative representation of) affective structures characteristic of the precariat. He points out that especially in the service industry, “marketing andDouble(ing) Voices163

7.

speculation in emotions” result in a commodification of what can be called ‘emotional
labour,’ thus turning “emotional life” into “a domain of inequality and stratification” (43).
There is a quite literal dimension to the concepts of ‘centre/‘periphery’ in the context of
Newfoundland society. In the 1950s to the 1970s, the federal government, in an attempt“to diversify, industrialize and modernize the provincial economy” by, among otherthings, providing “health care, education, electricity and transportation to all residentsof the province,” urged the population of remote areas along the Bays into larger, moreaccessible ‘growth areas,’ which resulted in the abandonment of many communities(Martin 2006a). They were promised “employment on the offshore draggers and trawlers, in the new fish plants, or in spin-off industries,” which “was to be the fishery of the
future, with good wages and secure employment” (Martin 2006b). However, the reality
was that many families were economically worse off after resettlement and the experience of dislocation, the necessity to adopt to a new lifestyle and the loss of cultural
identity caused much distress. The novel threatens to reverse this socio-cultural centre–
periphery relation, especially in the sections focalised on Iris (cf. e.g. Coles 2019, 205).

References
Aarhus, Mathies G. 2021. “Anxiety in the Precariat: The Affects of Class in James Kelman’s
Fiction.” In Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, edited by Peter Simonsen and Emily J. Hogg, 42–55. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1984. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.”
October 28: 125–133.
Blome, Eva. 2020. “Rückkehr zur Herkunft: Autosoziobiografien erzählen von der Klassengesellschaft.” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 94: 541–571.
Blome, Eva, Philipp Lammers, and Sarah Seidel. 2022. Autosoziobiographie: Poetik und
Politik. Berlin, Heidelberg: J. B. Metzler.
Coles, Megan Gail. 2019. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. Toronto:
House of Anansi Press.
Connell, Liam. 2021. “Anxious Reading: The Precarity Novel and the Affective Class.” In
Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, edited by Peter Simonsen and Emily
J. Hogg, 27–41. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Demeulenaere, Alex. 2021. “Writing the Voices of Precarity in Contemporary French Literature.” In Literary Representations of Precarious Work, 1840 to the Present, edited byMichiel Rys and Bart Philipsen, 145–158. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ernaux, Annie, and Isabelle Charpentier. 2005. “La littérature est une arme de combat….”
In Rencontres avec Pierre Bourdieu, edited by Gérard Mauger, 159–175. Broissieux:
Éditions du Croquant.

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Ernst, Christina. 2020. “‘Arbeiterkindliteratur’ nach Eribon: Autosoziobiographie in derdeutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur.” Lendemain 180: 77–91.
Hogg, Emily J. 2021. “Introduction.” In Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture,edited by Peter Simonsen and Emily J. Hogg, 1–24. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jaquet, Chantal. 2014. Les transclasses ou la non-reproduction. Paris: PUF.
Jaquet, Chantal. 2018. Zwischen den Klassen: Über die Nicht-Reproduktion sozialer Macht.
Mit einem Nachwort von Carlos Spoerhase. Translated by Horst Brühmann. Göttingen:
Konstanz University Press.
Lenz, Markus A. 2019. “‘Parallelgesellschaft’ der Retrospektive oder Klassenbewusstsein
des Außenseiters? Didier Eribons Retour à Reims und Édouard Louis’ En finir avec
Eddy Belleguele.” Romanische Studien Beihefte 8: 163–177.
Lorey, Isabell. 2015. State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious. Translated by Aileen
Derieg. London, New York: Verso.
Martin, Melanie. 2006a. “Centralization.” Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage. Accessed 6 December 2022. https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/centralization.
php.
Martin, Melanie. 2006b. “Was Resettlement Justified?” Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage. Accessed 6 December 2022. https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/resettlement-analysis.php.
Marx, Stephanie. 2021. “The Impossibility of Protest: Precarity in Maria Leitner’s Reportage Novel Hotel Amerika.” In Literary Representations of Precarious Work, 1840 to thePresent, edited by Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen, 73–87. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
McRobbie, Angela. 2010. “Reflections on Feminism, Immaterial Labour and the PostFordist Regime.” New Formations 70 (Autumn): 60–76.
Rys, Michiel, and Bart Philipsen. 2021. “Introduction: Poetics and Precarity: Literary
Representations of Precarious Work, Past and Present.” In Literary Representations ofPrecarious Work, 1840 to the Present, edited by Michiel Rys and Bart Philipsen, 1–19.
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schaub, Christoph. 2020. “Autosoziobiografisches und autofiktionales Schreiben überKlasse in Didier Eribons Retour à Reims, Daniela Dröschers Zeige deine Klasse und
Karin Strucks Klassenliebe.” Lendemain 180: 64–76.
Spoerhase, Carlos. 2018. “Aufstiegsangst: Zur Autosoziobiographie des Klassenübergängers.” In Chantal Jaquet, Zwischen den Klassen: Über die Nicht-Reproduktion sozialer
Macht, 231–253. Göttingen: Konstanz University Press.
Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Trnka, Alexandra. 2021. “Megan Gail Coles: Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward
Gun Club.” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 31, no. 1: 141–144.

3.2
Obstacles to Leaving,
Problems of Arriving
Gender and Genealogy in Contemporary German Narrativesof the Social Climber (Christian Baron, Bov Bjerg,
Deniz Ohde, Anke Stelling)
Irene Husser

Over the last years, social problems and questions of class have gained importance in German literature; literary scholar Leonhard Herrmann (2021) evendiagnoses a “social turn” in texts of authors like Sybille Berg, Deniz Ohde, andMarlene Streeruwitz. There are various literary and non-literary reasons for thisnew-found interest. After the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s andits large-scale enforcement in the 2000s (for instance, the German ‘Hartz IV’agenda was launched in 2005), the 2010s showed the consequences of neoliberalsocial politics in Western societies: the increasing divide between rich and poor,
the erosion of the middle class, the rising number of social upheavals, the upsurge of right-wing populism. These shifts in social reality resonated with a literary field that is dominated by realist poetics, at the heart of which lies the ambition to convey socially representative and relevant content and to make societal
contributions (Tommek 2015). Influenced by the international success of Frenchauthors Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, and Édouard Louis, who have shaped
the genre of autosociobiography (Spoerhase 2017; Blome, Lammers and Seidel2022) and popularised class narratives in contemporary literature, the German
literary and cultural field in the late 2010s/early 2020s has become intensely invested in themes of class and social inequality.
Nevertheless, certain methodical challenges have arisen together with problems faced by literary scholars when dealing with contemporary fiction andautofiction that revolve around the themes of class society and social mobility.
These sociologically informed texts operate with and sometimes openly reflect
on theoretical concepts of class, milieu, habitus, field and so forth, so that theliterary scholar is apparently left with identifying these concepts and confirming

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Irene Husserthat the texts are sociologically well-informed. These epistemological troubles
are aggravated by the realist mode of the texts. Moritz Baßler (2013; 2021) argues in a structuralist tradition that texts applying realist techniques engage inworld-building by adopting collective cultural frames and scripts and thereby
tend to rather affirm than challenge the readers’ (e.g. sociological) knowledge
and worldview. Analyses that dwell on the thematic concept are therefore prone
to reproduce what has already been reproduced by popular realism.
A way out of this interpretative deadlock is to focus on narrative strategies
and devices that construct and convey meaning by following some and dismissing other literary traditions, tropes, and socio-cultural scripts: these are concepts of freedom and determinism, autonomy and heteronomy, individual andsociety that have defined the discourse of social climbing since the eighteenth
and nineteenth century. An enormous part of contemporary fiction and autofiction on class still explores upward social movement. This narrative preference
cannot, therefore, be only attributed to the authors’ biographical contexts.1 The
experience of social transgression also proves the existence of classes and classborders, legitimises the act of exposing the world of the underprivileged andgives occasion to reflect on questions of social justice in the twenty-first century. Contemporary narratives of the social climber take the protagonists backto their biographical starting points and showcase their estrangement together
with their emotional and/or political involvement with their milieu of origin.
By following this plot structure, contemporary class (auto)fiction focuses on thedetermining role of family and descent for social mobility, and in doing so, also
explores the influence of gender and gender images on disengaging from one’ssocial upbringing. In this chapter, I will argue that this link between genealogy
and gender serves to express an ambivalent view on the possibilities of upward
social movement, reflecting the narrators’ disidentification from, yet bond to,their milieu of descent and its gender norms, as well as their remaining discomfort with the milieu of arrival and its rejection of working-class life.

Class, Gender and (Anti-)Genealogy: A Historical Sketch
The figure of the social climber can be traced back to ancient and Christiansources, reappearing in literary modernity in the eighteenth century, since thentaking many masks as picaresque hero, parvenu or self-made man. In German
literature of the eighteenth century, this figure is closely linked to the idea of Bildung and the genre of the Bildungsroman (for example, Karl Philipp Moritz’s Anton Reiser), whereas nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature—meaning Realist novels by Gustav Freytag, Fanny Lewald or Friedrich Spielhagen,Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving167(fictional as well as non-fictional) self-made narratives from the turn of the century and Weimar literature—instead focuses on aspects of wealth and successthat are presented as the drive for and purpose of the characters’ development.2
The recurrence of this figure underlies the social climber as a paradigmatic modern subject who represents individual autonomy instead of social determinism,
the future instead of the past, and discontinuity instead of tradition. From philosophers of the Enlightenment to French Revolutionists, bourgeois culture in
the eighteenth century opposes the heredity of offices and rights, “futurizing theconcept of generation” (Parnes, Vedder and Willer 2008, 82–119; see also Moretti 2000, 3–6); Benjamin Brückner (2019) argues that this shift from genealogy
to descendance is popularised and radicalised in the nineteenth-century life sciences with biological, psychiatric, hygienic, and other discourses underlining thedangers of heritage and heredity for future generations (77–128). It is only underthese historical circumstances that the social climber becomes a mirror for antigenealogical phantasies of self-production and self-efficacy. The occurrence of
this figure usually coincides with times of change and crisis when modern societies need to bolster or question meritocratic values.
Scholars like James V. Catano (1990; 2001) and Jana Vijayakumaran (2022)
have pointed out that anti-genealogical narratives of social advancement are
generally male narratives that promote certain gender norms and ideals—for
example, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narrative of the selfmade man is a narrative of self-creation that presents the image of a potent,
virile, individualistic, and strong-minded masculinity. This masculinity is resolutely defined
against the feminine by presenting two negative arguments. The most specificnegative appeal in a myth concerned with origins alludes to escape from themother. A second, more subtle appeal encourages departure from the realm of
the feminine, with its daily interpersonal concerns, and a subsequent movement
into the mythical realm of individual and corporate battle. (Catano 1995, 426)

The self-made man is origin-free in terms of his maternal origins and female
influence in general, his virile agility and vigorousness serving as a discursive
counterpoint to cultural diagnoses of modern decadence, decay, and exhaustion(Vijayakumaran 2022, 48–49).
Nevertheless, there are also female narratives of social transgression that in
the nineteenth century often build upon a heteronomous structure with the he­roines marrying into the upper class. This plot predestines female class narratives
to promote values of compromise and social reconciliation, though Gunhild
Kübler (1982) shows that realist writers as Wilhelm Raabe and Theodor Fontane

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likewise explore failed social advancement and, in doing so, criticise the meritocratic ideology and materialism of bourgeois society.3 Female social climbers innineteenth-century literature are thereby not only more likely to fail, but also require other qualities than their male counterparts: Kübler argues that, particularly in fiction by popular female authors like Eugenie Marlitt and Minna Kautsky,
successful social advancement is reserved for heroines who embody the ideal of
the innocent woman, that is to say, who affirm bourgeois gender-specific morals
instead of performing the materialistic, economic principles of bourgeois society.
In modern bourgeois society, masculinity and femininity function as metaphors for rather abstract social relations and structural conflicts (Koschorke2000), enabling the description and management of these problems—with systems of hetero-reference being encoded as female and self-referentiality being
viewed a male principle (Kucklick 2008, 209–236). By regarding femininity andmasculinity as cultural codes, it is possible to differentiate between narratives
with male/female characters, on the one hand, and gendered cultural codes thatare applied to these characters to narrate class society, on the other. Considering this, when it comes to social mobility, narratives with male protagonists
historically promote values of individualism, self-efficacy, and autogenesis thatare presented as male virtues. Narratives with female characters tend to apply aheteronomous plot structure, conveying the image of the dependent, yet morally impeccable woman, and focus more on limitations and borders of class society. Literature can perpetuate these concepts, but also explore conflicts thatarise from gender binarism and even defy the notion of “Geschlechtscharaktere”(natural gender dispositions) (Hausen 1976). Social advancement of male characters can be displayed within a female narrative and vice versa—as, for example,
texts on the New Woman in Weimar literature do: the character Gilgi in Irmgard
Keun’s novel of the same name (1931) must adapt to the modern working world
and its values of individualism, self-control, and self-reliance to economicallysurvive, sacrificing her romantic, giving, sensual self that is encoded as female.
On that basis this chapter sets out to explore the themes of genealogy and gender in contemporary novels of class advancement. On the one hand, it examines
the gendered cultural scripts and codes of social mobility to which the narratives
adhere, and on the other, it elicits how these scripts are employed to voice gender
troubles that come up in the process of social transgression in the twenty-first
century. On that note, I will take a closer look at the texts of Christian Baron, Bov
Bjerg, Deniz Ohde, and Anke Stelling, and analyse different gender–genealogicalconstellations. This approach helps to contextualise the novels in their relation
to historical cultural perceptions of class and gender and understand their sociopolitical agendas that build on these patterns while also challenging them.

Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving169

Fathers: Objects of Patricide and Pity
Since the eighteenth century, with thinkers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant,
the patriarch (in the political as well as in the familial sense), who rules despotically over his household/country and demands obedience from his family
members/subjects, becomes a suspect figure, contradicting the new enlightened
ideals of the autonomous, rational, mature individual (Thomä 2008, 28–47).
Nevertheless, modernity is still haunted by the patriarchal nightmare: the imageof the cruel, imperious, unforgiving father and his claim to absolute power. The
fear of this atavistic figure is also why—from Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s earlyworks to those of Franz Kafka and literary modernism—German literature has
extensively fantasised about (real or metaphorical) patricide: the patriarch not
only represents asymmetrical (familial, social and political) power relations but
also embodies tradition and genealogy.
In the same way, adjacent disciplines employ the trope of patricide to reflect
on modernity’s relation to authority and tradition. For Sigmund Freud, the murder of the forefather and the sons’ guilt over their patricide lie at the origin of
religion and morality. In sociology, Pierre Bourdieu (1999) argues that social
reproduction in modern meritocratic societies requires patricide: the “successful inheritance is a murder of the father accomplished at the father’s injunction,a going beyond the father that will preserve him and preserve as well his own‘project’ of going beyond” (508). Bourdieu thereby denies patricide to be an exclusively anti-genealogical act when the process of succession implies the idea ofadvancement that can only be achieved through extending the father’s achievements. Bourdieu indicates that this structure of inheritance is characteristic ofmiddle-class ideology; upper and lower classes, on the other hand, tend to reproduce themselves through preservation. Provided that the “son’s identification
with the father’s desire as a desire for preservation produces an unproblematic
inheritor” (ibid., 508), the most radical form of patricide can be attributed to aperson who, in an anti-genealogical manner, refuses the father’s desire for mere
preservation.
This radical gesture is topical for contemporary narratives of the social climber. The fathers in texts by Bjerg, Baron, and Ohde represent repetition and stagnation. In Bjerg’s Serpetinen (Serpentines, 2020),4 the male protagonist, a professor of sociology from a rural working-class family, comes from a line of suicidal
fathers: his own father killed himself when the protagonist was a teenager. The
father in Baron’s Ein Mann seiner Klasse (A Man of His Class, 2020) is a copy of
his own brutal, abusive, and aggressive father, the narrator’s grandfather, who
is at the centre of Baron’s latest novel Schön ist die Nacht (Beautiful is the Night,
2022). In Ohde’s Streulicht (Scattered Light, 2020), the daughter returns to her

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hometown and her father’s house. The novel captures the paralysing, almost post­
histoire atmosphere of a post-industrial city that is embodied in the father andhis living arrangements. His apartment is flooded with wastepaper and otherold, useless things, reflecting his adherence to the past and his milieu of origin.
This trait of nostalgia and the fear of change are presented as a paternal heritage: “Mein Großvater und mein Vater waren vom selben Schlage: Sie hassten
Veränderungen, schon das Reden darüber ihnen zuwider”5 (Ohde 2020, 24).
Though given the chance to attend a school for higher education, the narrator’s
father chooses the life of his paternal ancestors, serving in the military and completing an apprenticeship in the same company as his father did.
All three texts suggest that breaking the vicious circle of paternal inheritanceis a necessity. This process is usually initiated by establishing a physical (leaving the hometown) and, by this, emotional distance that allows the protagonists
to dissociate from the fathers’ values as well as their fears of failure. The textsof Baron and Bjerg furthermore demonstrate that, for the male protagonists,
patricide first and foremost aims at the gender norms of the working-class milieu. The first-person narrators in Ein Mann seiner Klasse and Serpentinen revolt
against concepts of masculinity identified with dominance, virility, and physicalstrength. The texts expose this masculinity as toxic since it enables misogyny,
homophobia, racism, and violence, as well as self-destructive behaviours. Since
the fathers’ identities are essentially based on the exclusion of the—female, queer,
foreign, and so forth—other, for the male characters, patricide comes along withrevoking these exclusions and identifying with the excluded: the protagonist in
Bjerg’s novel takes his wife’s last name; the narrator in Baron’s Ein Mann seiner
Klasse befriends a boy with a migrant background and later in life chooses a career in writing, when in his childhood he had to be careful about showing interest in poetry and other things his father considered feminine.
Nevertheless, the texts do not simply present strong-minded subjects who, inenacting patricide, move on from their milieu of origin, but rather explore thepowers of genealogy and class descent. The protagonist in Bjerg’s Serpentinen
feels haunted by the male curse of destruction and self-destruction. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator likewise finds himself considering suicide; headmits to reproducing the alcoholism and toxic male behaviour he has desperately tried to get away from. Similarly, the first-person narrator in Baron’s autosociobiography (2020) reflects on struggling with a violent temper in his teenage
years that he ascribes to his upbringing in a culture of male violence: “In wenigen
Jahren, so hoffte ich, würden Kneipenschlägereien für mich normal warden, ichwürde zur Bundeswehr gehen und dort trinkfest werden”6 (160), the narrator
focalises his younger self who regarded his father as a role model. Ohde’s novelends with the father’s comforting as well as resigning message to his daughter:

Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving171“Wenn’s nichts wird, kommst wieder heim”7 (ibid., 285), indicating that the social transgression is not completed yet, that there is still a chance of failing, thatthe milieu’s self-sabotaging ways might prevail in the end.
This focus on the powers of genealogy shows that contemporary class narratives are particularly interested in the struggles and obstacles of class advancement and disagree with the (neo-)liberal idea of the fully autonomous, originfree subject. Though the narrators succeed in climbing the social ladder, thetexts explore what ties them to their social origin and show the impossibility ofa clean break. The irreducibility of genealogy is forcefully illustrated by a plot
structure that most contemporary narratives of social transgression employ: inthe narrative present, the protagonists deal with absent, that is, already deceasedor physically ill and mentally broken patriarchs. This narrative construction, on
the one hand, evades a direct confrontation with the imperious, virile patriarch
and affirms his paralysing impact; on the other, his absence stands in the way of
an ultimate break from the past. The protagonist in Bjerg’s novel (2020) regrets
not having a father to kill and free himself from: “Den Vater umzubringen oderden Stiefvater, das war die Befreiung. Doch was sollte einer tun, wenn der Vater
sich selbst umbrachte? Wie konnte einer sich befreien?”8 (71) The text argues
that the symbolic patricide is insufficient, that it implies the danger of self-denialand self-hatred when not accompanied by introspection and—as Didier Eribon(2017, 73–97), following Bourdieu, calls it—a critical “re-appropriation” of thepaternal tradition.
For the narrators, this re-appropriation inevitably raises the question ofwhether there was ever a consummate patriarch to begin with. Baron’s text presents the father as a divided self, as his abrasive, brutal side is contrasted with hisdamaged body and resigned spirit. Baron’s autosociobiography bears a resemblance to Édouard Louis’ Qui a tué mon père (Who Killed My Father, 2018), directly alluding to the French title: “Wer oder was hat meinen Vater umgebracht?
Sein Kummer? Seine Krankheit? Sein Körper? Seine Arbeit? Seine Armut? Seine
Klasse? Sein Sohn?”9 (Baron 2020, 279). In his text, Louis contrasts the patriarchal nightmare from his childhood with the present-day father who suffers frommany illnesses and physical ailments that are considered to be the result of thegovernment’s social and labour policy. The father’s damaged and disabled bodyis highly politicised. It arouses pity and is a sign of social injustice that calls for
systemic change, the text culminating in a demand for revolution. Baron’s text is
less explicit. Where Louis enumerates social policy measures in France’s recent
history and explores their impacts on the male working-class body, Baron relies
more on showing rather than telling a link between the macro- and microcosm,
building on the readers’ cultural knowledge about class and society. Nonetheless,both texts aim at reconciling the son with the father and politically connecting

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the narrators with their milieus of origin. The absence of the patriarch allows
the reader to see the vulnerable man behind the violent, authoritarian mask andunderstand (not excuse) his toxic behaviour as a form of compensation and reproduction.
Contemporary narratives of the social climber therefore participate in themodern deconstruction of patriarchy—by, on the one hand, employing the tropeof patricide and, on the other, exposing the patriarch as a vulnerable, divided andpitiful self. This dialectics of disidentification10 and critical re-appropriation of
the paternal tradition aims at exploring the injustices of class society. The narrators struggle with disentangling themselves from their roots, but they also find
new ways of declaring their solidarity with their class origin. In confronting theirfathers, the protagonists explore their (voluntary and involuntary) ties to theirsocial origin and explain their departure negatively—as a desire for distinction:
the male narrators reject constituent aspects of their fathers’ gender identities,
Ohde’s female character disidentifies with her father’s self-sufficiency. Still, thetexts also explore positive reasons for social advancement by focusing on themother figures.

Mothers: Anti-Genealogy and its Pitfalls
Every narrative of social advancement struggles with the question of why people
feel the need to leave (or rather, in most cases, escape) their origins and how
they manage to do so. Contemporary narratives show the working-class milieu,
embodied by the father, as depressing, suffocating, and toxic, yet the narrators
not only explore their alienation from it, but also detect a maternal tradition of
not-belonging. The mother in Bjerg’s novel, who was born in former eastern
territories of Germany, has always remained a stranger in the Swabian Alps, herhusband’s homeland. Whereas the father of the first-person narrator was a lifelong Nazi, the protagonist remembers a scene at the kitchen table, in which themother, a simple working-class woman, quotes from Paul Celan’s poem “Todesfuge” (“Deathfugue”). In Baron’s Ein Mann seiner Klasse, the narrator remembers
his late mother as an artistically gifted, sensitive, warm-hearted woman who isdestroyed by patriarchal physical and psychological violence and dies an early
death from ovarian cancer. After his mother’s death, he is raised by his two aunts
who also—each in her own way—do not conform to their milieu of origin and its
gender roles: his aunt Juli takes up the role of the “Familienoberhaupt” (“head of
the family”) (Baron 2020, 226) that is usually designated to the patriarch, while
his Aunt Ela has married into the “Bildungsbürgertum” (ibid., 233) and introduces the narrator to high culture and art.

Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving173

In both texts, the mothers (and mother-like characters) are constructed as not
fully adjusted to their class of origin, thereby serving as a mirror to the sons’ nonand disidentification with their social backgrounds. Because the working-classmilieu is shown to perpetuate a patriarchal system in which the female is otheredand excluded, male narrators, in their rejection of working-class masculinity,
solidarise and identify with the other. Interestingly, the mothers and female relatives rarely succeed in overcoming their social origin—exceptions are Baron’s
Aunt Ela and, in non-German literature, the mother in Édouard Louis’ Combats
et Metamorphoses d’une femme (A Woman’s Battles and Transformations, 2021).
In other cases, the mothers have neither the will nor the means to leave tradition
behind, but they do pass the sense of not-belonging on to their children, who
accomplish what their mothers were not capable of: the narrator in Baron’s text
becomes a novelist and journalist—a career path that was closed to his mother
who also wrote poems, but was ignored and even ridiculed for it by her teachers.
In male narratives of the social climber, the identification with the mother istold without significant ambivalence. The socially deviant mother offers a matrilineal explanation for the capability to transgress. Daughter narratives, on theother hand, struggle with the mother figures, questioning not only their gender identity, but also their social nonconformism. Like Baron’s and Louis’ texts,
Ohde’s novel explores the mother’s road to independence: She emigrated fromher home country of Turkey on her own, refusing to subordinate herself to strict
religious rules, and even left her husband for a short period of time. The novel encodes the yearning for freedom as female—not only in the mother’s anddaughter’s biographies, but also in a short neighbourly scene witnessed by thenarrator: a woman on a balcony opposite tells her lover that they “müssen hierweg” (“need to get away from here”) (Ohde 2020, 216), while her male counterpart remains silent and, so the narrator assumes, refuses to see the oppressiveness of their town.
Despite this female transgressive potential, Ohde’s narrator recognises a “Bigotterie” (“bigotry”) (2020, 226) in her mother’s self-identification as a strongminded woman. The daughter takes umbrage at her mother’s view on womanhood, regarding her husband, and men in general, as a “Naturgewalt” (“forceof nature”) (ibid., 229) that women need to face. The narrator deconstructs thisimage of the confident female who bears her husband’s outbursts of rage with
serenity as resignation and holds it against her mother that she did not resist
her husband, passing this self-sufficiency on to her daughter: “Man konnte nicht
davon ausgehen, dass es auf der Welt etwas Besseres gab, man konnte es nicht
einfach so einfordern. Das habe ich von ihr gelernt”11 (ibid., 226). The mothercannot serve as a role model for liberation because she abandoned the road to female independence,12 yet the narrator at the same time takes up this unfinished174

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project that logically results in class transgression: independence, self-actualisation and emancipation, which until the nineteenth and early twentieth century
were seen as a bourgeois male project, have become values of the individualistic
upper-middle-class milieu (Koppetsch 2001) in the second half of the twentiethcentury. The mother could have never indulged in her heretical impulses in theworking class, so it is left to the daughter to follow in her footsteps.
Ohde’s narrative illustrates Bourdieu’s (1999) concept of the social climber’s“habitus divided against itself, in constant negotiation with itself and with its ambivalence” (511), but instead of murdering the father in order to “preserve him
and preserve as well his own ‘project’ of going beyond” (ibid., 508), the narrator
in Streulicht inherits her mother’s impulse to ‘go beyond’ and must commit matricide in order to accomplish the project of female independence. The narrator
counteracts her mother’s bigotry by revoking the “Unwissenheit” (“ignorance”
or “lack of knowledge”) (Ohde 2020, 41) she was exposed to as a child and addressing controversial socio-political issues that the parent tried to protect her
from. Growing up as the daughter of a Turkish mother, the narrator witnessed
racism and became a victim of a racist assault, which the mother regarded as anaccident and a misunderstanding: “Aber du kannst nicht gemeint sein. Du bist
Deutsche”13 (ibid., 49). The text presents this inability to address obvious problems as a working-class mentality, a self-protective mechanism which defines
the mother’s and father’s social roles, all of which constitutes exactly what thenarrator needs to overcome—implying that the novel, on a self-referential level,
can be seen as a manifestation of this process.
In Anke Stelling’s Schäfchen im Trockenen14 (2018), the female narrator, amother herself, likewise attributes her social advancement to a maternal inheritance, but she dismantles the female “Hoffnung auf Neuanfang, auf Unschuld”15(Stelling 2019, 141) as naïve and socially affirmative. Whereas Ohde’s protagonist identifies with the bourgeois individualistic claim for female self-liberation
and accuses her mother of having failed to accomplish it, Stelling’s narrator accuses mothers like hers of passing their dreams of freedom on to their daughters—“ohne Idee davon oder Hinweis darauf, wie sie vielleicht zu verwirklichen
wären”16 (ibid., 8). Stelling rejects the idea of liberation put forth from an unenlightened point of view, i.e. one which disregards socio-economic realities
and social power relations. In her adult life, the narrator recognises distinctions
between herself as a social climber and her friends who come from an uppermiddle-class social background—distinctions that lead to a break. The narrator
must learn that genealogy matters in terms of material inheritance and struggles
with addressing these issues in a meritocratic society that is ruled by the neoliberal idea that anybody can economically succeed if they have the will to do so.

Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving175

Unlike Baron’s or Ohde’s text, Stelling’s novel is written from the standpoint ofa person who has lived among the bourgeois establishment for decades and wonders how she could not see the difference. The search for explanations leads her
to her mother’s self-delusion and again “Unwissenheit”17 (“ignorance” or “lackof knowledge”) (ibid., 56), for which the narrator tries to compensate. The novelis addressed to the narrator’s eldest daughter, whom she tries to save from themisconceptions she has been exposed to all her life:
Anders als meine Mutter werde ich nicht davon ausgehen, dass sie mit der Zeitschon erfährt, was sie wissen muss; anders als Renate und ihre Freundinnen werde
ich nichts zurückhalten in der Vorstellung, dass meine Erzählung die Kinder negativ beeinflussen, entmutigen oder in ihrer Entfaltung behindern könnte. Im Gegenteil, ich stelle mir vor, dass ich sie ausrüste mit Wissen und Geschichten. Dassich sie nicht naiv und leichten Mutes, sondern beladen mit Erkenntnissen undInterpretationen losschicke—Rüstung und Waffen wiegen nun mal.18 (ibid., 12)

In all four examples, the narrators’ estrangement from their milieus of origin
is not only traced back to their mothers, but this narrative arrangement also
constructs a tradition of not-belonging or of a longing to leave which inherently refuses the idea of autogenesis. At the beginning of this chapter, I argued
that masculinity and femininity in bourgeois society function as metaphors forrather abstract social relations, with systems of hetero-reference being traditionally encoded as female and systems of self-referentiality being described as male.
Though not every text is as outspoken in its critique of neoliberalism as Stelling’s
novel, contemporary narratives of the social climber contradict the idea of a socially permeable, meritocratic society and, in (among other things)19 constructing a maternal tradition of anti-genealogy, display a heteronomous, historicallyfemale-associated structure.
Despite this common ground, male and female narrators show a different degree of identification with their mothers, which implies that the references tothe parents also serve to express conflicts of gender identity that come with social advancement. For male characters, class transgression requires a critique ofworking-class masculinity, which is enacted through identification with the female other, whereas female narrators reject the patriarchal tradition, but also address female failure to break with this tradition. Therefore, Stelling’s and Ohde’s
narratives, more than Baron’s and Bjerg’s texts, reflect on the idea of emancipation, exploring its conditions and constraints, but also—with Stelling’s narrator
redefining motherhood—looking for ways of accomplishing it.

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Concluding Remarks
This chapter set out to explore ways in which modern class societies employ binary gender codes as a mode of self-description and self-critique and to illuminate
the role of literature in these negotiations. Comparing contemporary narrativesof the social climber with narratives of the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies, one can see that many twenty-first century literary works reject of idea
of autogenesis and autonomy by, on the one hand, embedding the impulse toleave in a female tradition of not-belonging, while, on the other, presenting characters who fail to fully break with the paternal genealogy. This focus on genealogy voices doubts about the idea of absolute freedom and individualism, though
the texts at the same time do not renounce the project of social climbing but
explore structural obstacles as well as challenges and rebounds that come with it.
Regarding class narratives in terms of gender also makes clear that in bourgeois society gender additionally bears a distinctive quality. Contemporarybourgeois culture promotes an anti-patriarchal set of values—a mindset that canbe traced to eighteenth-century literature, which attempted to redefine the patriarch as a loving, forgiving father, while working-class masculinity, with its stresson physical strength and dissociation from the feminine, is nowadays viewed as
outdated and toxic. Contemporary narratives of the social climber reproduce
this discourse of toxic masculinity, yet the texts do not simply condemn traditional working-class masculinity but depict, and in some cases declare theirpolitical solidarity with the disabled, emotionally suffering, and insecure individuals that the protagonists’ violent fathers equally are.
Literature is not only capable of exposing that modern societies rely on binary
gender codes but can also explore the effects of these structures on individuals
and their gender identities. The texts broach the issue of gender troubles thatcome with social transgression. Male narrators are required to break with thenorms of working-class masculinity and identify with the other of the patriarchal system, the female-encoded tradition of not-belonging and individualism,
whereas female narrators struggle with finding a female role model, refusing
their mothers’ self-delusional habits, but also not coming to terms with uppermiddle-class femininity (embodied by the narrator’s best friend Sophia in Ohde’s
Streulicht). By alienating their protagonists from the gender norms they wereraised by, applying historically female narratives to male characters and vice versa (female longing for emancipation), but also by showing the destructive effects
of working-class masculinity and femininity on the parent generation, all texts
participate in the contemporary deconstruction of gender binaries and thereby
show their alignment with bourgeois culture.

Obstacles to Leaving, Problems of Arriving177

Nevertheless, this deconstruction does not mean full adjustment and uncritical identification, and the texts also indicate problems of arriving in the middle- to upper-class individualist milieu. Stelling in particular voices discomfort
and accuses her bourgeois friends of hypocrisy, but Ohde and Bjerg also depict
the not-fully-belonging of their narrators to their milieu of arrival. Just as theprotagonists are incapable of leaving their descent behind, the texts display anambivalence regarding the narrators’ attitude to the upper-middle-class set ofvalues: they, on the one hand, identify (or have identified) with its emancipatory,
individualistic promises and, on the other, become aware of the exclusion thatcomes with it.

Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Many of the texts can be counted among the genre of autosociobiography or rather
autofiction: they are written by authors who themselves come from an underprivilegedsocial background and blur the line between autobiography and fiction. For the role ofthis authenticity-suggesting genre in contemporary popular realism, cf. Baßler 2022.
For a comparison of the two genres Bildungsroman and Aufstiegsroman, cf. Vijayakumaran 2022, 119–150.
On economic criticism in realist literature of the nineteenth century, see Breyer andThanner 2019; and Schößler and Blaschke 2019.
The titles’ translations as well as the following translations of passages from Baron’s,
Bjerg’s, Ohde’s and Stelling’s novels are my own.
“My grandfather and father were of the same kind: they hated change, were repulsedby the mere mentioning of it.”
“In a few years, so I hoped, bar fights would become a part of my everyday life, I would
join the army and be able to hold my drink.”
7. “If this does not work out, you’ll just come back home.”
8. “Murdering the father or stepfather, that was liberation. But what should one do if thefather killed himself? How could one liberate oneself?”
9. “Who or what killed my father? His grief? His illness? His body? His work? His poverty? His class? His son?”
10. For this aspect see also Jaquet 2018, 106–134.
11. “One could not assume that there was something better in the world, one could not
simply claim something. That I learned from her.”
12. Cf. “Nie war es ihr darum gegangen, mir diese Unabhängigkeit vorzuleben, die sie
erfasst hatte, als sie mit zehn oder elf Jahren heimlich Schweinefleisch aß” (“She wasnever about setting an example of that independence that had gripped her when she
decided to eat pork at the age of ten or eleven”) (Ohde 2020, 229).
6.

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13. “They don’t mean you. You’re German.”
14. There is no literal translation for this title; it builds on the German saying “seine Schäf-

chen ins Trockene bringen,” which is equivalent to the English idiom “to feather one’s
own nest.”
15. “[H]ope for a fresh start, for innocence.”
16. “[W]ithout having an idea or giving a clue on how to achieve them.”
17. The same term is used in Ohde’s novel, as discussed above.
18. “Unlike my mother, I will not assume that she will learn with time what she needs toknow; unlike Renate and her friends, I will not hold back thinking that my story might
have a negative influence on the children, discourage them or interfere with their development. On the contrary, I imagine that I supply them with knowledge and stories.
That I send them off burdened with insight and interpretation—armour and weapons
are a heavy weight.”
19. Baron and Ohde also focus on the role of the educational system and other public
institutions that usually thwart, but in some rare cases (for example, with dedicatedteachers) enable, upward social mobility.

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Die Unendlichkeit des Erzählens: Der Roman in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur seit
1989, edited by Carsten Rohde and Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann, 27–45. Bielefeld:
Aisthesis.
Baßler, Moritz. 2021. “Der neue Midcult.” POP. Kultur und Kritik 18 (Spring): 132–149.
Baßler, Moritz. 2022. Populärer Realismus: Von International Style gegenwärtigen Erzählens. Munich: Beck.
Baron, Christian. 2020. Ein Mann seiner Klasse. 3rd ed. Berlin: Ullstein.
Bjerg, Bov. 2020. Serpetinen. 3rd ed. Berlin: Ullstein.
Blome, Eva, Phillip Lammers, and Sarah Seidel, eds. 2022. Autosoziographie: Poetik und
Politik. Berlin, Heidelberg: Metzler.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1999. “The Contradictions of Inheritance.” In The Weight of the World:
Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, edited by Pierre Bourdieu, 507–513. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Breyer, Till, and Veronika Thanner. 2019. “Geld- und Kreditverhältnisse im Realismus.”In Handbuch Literatur und Ökonomie, edited by Joseph Vogl and Burkhardt Wolf,
536–550. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Brückner, Benjamin. 2019. Familie erzählen: Vererbung in Literatur und Wissenschaft,
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Catano, James V. 2001. Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-MadeMan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
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Dissoziation von Erwerbs- und Familienleben.” In Sozialgeschichte der Familie in derNeuzeit Europas. Neue Forschungen, edited by Werner Conze, 363–393, Stuttgart: Klett.
Herrmann, Leonhard. 2021. “Nach dem Populismus: Komplexität, Polyvalenz und der‘Social Turn’ in Büchern von Deniz Ohde, Marlene Streeruwitz und Sibylle Berg.” Gegenwartsliteratur: A German Studies Yearbook 20: 315–342.
Jaquet, Chantal. 2018. Zwischen den Klassen: Über die Nicht-Reproduktion sozialer Macht.
Göttingen: Konstanz University Press.
Koppetsch, Cornelia. 2001. “Milieu und Geschlecht: Eine kontextspezifische Perspektive.”
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Koschorke, Albrecht. 2000. “Die Männer und die Moderne.” In Der Blick vom Wolkenkratzer: Avantgarde—Avantgardekritik—Avantgardeforschung, edited by Wolfgang
Asholt and Walter Fähnders, 141–162. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi.
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Rollenzuschreibung im deutschen Roman 1870–1900. Bonn: Bouvier.
Kucklick, Christoph. 2008. Das unmoralische Geschlecht: Zur Genese der negativen Andrologie. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
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Secker.
Louis, Édouard. 2021. A Woman’s Battles and Transformations. Translated by Tash Aw.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Moretti, Franco. 1987. The Way of the World. The Bildungsroman in European Culture.
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Ohde, Deniz. 2020. Streulicht. 3rd ed. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Parnes, Ohad, Ulrike Vedder, and Stefan Willer. 2008. Das Konzept der Generation: Eine
Wissens- und Kulturgeschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Schößler, Franziska, and Bernd Blaschke. 2019. “Die Entdeckung der Ware.” In Handbuch
Literatur und Ökonomie, edited by Joseph Vogl and Burkhardt Wolf, 523–535. Berlin,
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Spoerhase, Carlos. 2017. “Politik der Form: Autosoziobiografie als Gesellschaftsanalyse.”
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des literarischen Feldes in Deutschland 1960–2000. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Vijayakumaran, Jana. 2022. Der Selfmademan in der deutschsprachigen Erzählliteratur derModerne: Zur Imaginationsgeschichte einer Schlüsselfigur. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

3.3
Narrating Class and Classlessness
in Contemporary British Novels ofBlack Women’s Social Climbing
Katrin Becker

Introduction: British (Post-)Migrant Fiction,
Intersectionality and Upward Mobility
A marked frequency of narratives of successful upward mobility seems to distinguish British post-migrant literature in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
century from migrant fiction rooted in the post-war Windrush era.1 Canonised
examples of the latter, such as Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), narrate
experiences of economic precarity and social marginalisation of black migrants
from the crumbling British Empire, evoking their disappointed hopes for a goodor better life in the ‘mother country’ (Bentley 2003, 41). In addition, Selvon’ssequel titled Moses Ascending (1975) mocks “the upwardly mobile pretensionsof the immigrant black” (Sigal 1988, 134). By contrast, the 1990s saw the publication of a wave of post-migrant Bildungsromane that frequently figure blacksocial climbers of working-class origin seemingly fulfilling the hopes of theirparental migrant generation. Mark Stein (1998; 2004) has influentially argued
that these ‘Black British’ texts, centred on post-migrant subjectivities attaining‘new’ positions of wealth and power, portray and purvey the social transformation of Britain.2 Following Joseph R. Slaughter (2006), we may also characterise
these post-migrant novels of trans-/formation as “perform[ing] a certain kindof incorporative literary social work” (1411), building on the genre’s historicalfunction as a “conventionalized […] narrative pattern for participation in theegalitarian imaginary of the new bourgeois nation-state, a plot for incorporation of previously marginalized people” (ibid., 1410). Although post-millennial“black writing of Britain” (McLeod 2010, 46) certainly goes beyond “the affective
and political concerns of black Britons” (ibid., 51), fiction centred on post-mi-

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grant, black subjectivities of working-class origin negotiating the incorporativetransformative promise of upward mobility remains prominent.
For instance, Natasha Brown’s debut Assembly (2021a) has been reviewed as“a novel about the kind of person the UK government’s recent commission on
race would have wanted to profile in their report” (Collins 2021), as an exampleof “the success of those minority groups that have been surging forward into the
middle class and the elite” (Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities 2021,
234). Like much public debate on inequality and intersectionality, this reportunderstands ‘class’ as “socio-economic background” that ‘intersects’ with “ethnicity” as “causes holding back equality of opportunity” (ibid., 10); a similar perspective seems to underlie Bernardine Evaristo’s (2021) contention that “the triple intersections of colour, class and gender inform and complicate the battle toachieve in our society” (viii). My own analytical perspective draws on the recent
reappraisal of class within the field of British sociology, particularly by scholars
such as Imogen Tyler (2015), who insists on an understanding of class as thepersistent socio-historical problematic of “structural conditions of inequality”(496) that necessitate ‘the battle to achieve’ in the first place. Tyler connects theconceptual erosion of class in this sense to the political formation of New Labour, whose “attempt to ‘decouple’ inequality from class” (ibid., 497) introduced
a neoliberal notion of classlessness, as epitomised by Tony Blair’s speech “on taking office, announc[ing] the dawn of a new meritocratic and ‘classless’ society”(Tyler 2013, 7). Mike Savage (2015) critically connects these and subsequent
re-investments in social mobility back to Michael Young’s satirical dystopia The
Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), arguing that: “A more competitive, ruthless andindeed meritocratic system can nonetheless generate high levels of inequality inlife chances which go hand-in-hand with very unequal processes” (Savage 2015,
189). And yet, as Jo Littler (2018) adds, despite its in-built tautology, ideologicalwear and empirical evidence to the contrary in our own contemporary moment,“meritocratic hope” (11) retains its “cultural pull” (ibid., 220); meritocracy, Littler (2020) writes, still “functions as the core legitimating ideological principle
for the inequalities of contemporary capitalism” (17).
In this chapter, I trace variations of the dominant “master plot” (Abbott 2002,43) of individual upward mobility across a selection of novels that narrate black
female achievement against all intersectional and structural odds, beginningwith Nicola Williams’ Without Prejudice ([1997] 2021), and moving on to Zadie
Smith’s NW ([2012] 2013), Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other ([2019]2020), and Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021a). With a particular focus on aesthetic and narrative strategies, my analyses tease out how these (at times semiautobiographical) novels negotiate neoliberal claims of classlessness related tothe meritocratic master plot of social climbing that is still offered as an (individu-

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183

alising) remedy for (structural) inequality in the social imaginary of contemporary Britain, to second-generation ‘migrants’ in particular. Much like the crossclass fiction analysed by Sula Textor in this volume, the novels discussed below
construct in-between voices and perspectives of ‘transclass’ individuals (Jaquet
2014, 13) who are both adapted and unadapted to the social contexts they navigate (ibid., 125). However, this chapter departs from Chantal Jaquet’s approachby reading transclass novels against the backdrop of the ideologically charged
imperative of upward mobility, a ‘valorising’ discourse decidedly factored out
by Jaquet (ibid., 10–12). Taken together, the texts discussed in this chapter areconspicuously concerned with such valorisations, and they juxtapose the individual transclass trajectories they narrate with glimpses of the kinds of collectivemodes of alleviating socio-economic inequality that Jaquet, once again, appears
to sideline (ibid., 10).3

Narrating the Careers Talk: Towards a Metanarrative
Deconstruction of the Master PlotA recurrent episode narrated in contemporary British fiction centred on upwardly mobile black women of working-class origin is them giving motivational
speeches to potential social climbers in schools or similar educational or community institutions. A good starting point for tracing this key episode across a
range of texts is Nicola Williams’ Without Prejudice, originally published in 1997
and reissued in 2021 as part of the Penguin series Black Britain: Writing Back,curated by Bernardine Evaristo. Just before giving a careers talk at her former
school, we witness the protagonist, criminal-law barrister Leanne (Lee) Mitchell,
successfully negotiating a difficult brief (chapter one and two); we are also filled
in about the particulars of her post-migrant, intergenerational success story, andhave seen her being celebrated as a truly self-made lawyer by a titled colleague(chapter three). As Evaristo (2021) notes in her introduction to Without Prejudice, “[i]n these first pages, Lee has been revealed to us as a plucky protagonist
who understands what it takes to succeed” (vii). Centred on “a black female barrister who is succeeding against the odds” (ibid., vi), Evaristo further contends,
the legal thriller “offers us a vision of black female achievement that is essential
to attaining and inspiring a more meritocratic nation” (ibid., ix).
This is indeed an adequate description of the novel’s political stance as mapped
onto the character’s careers talk, a foil that is reworked in later novels of black
female achievement and thus deserves critical analysis. We may start by considering how the character describes her two-fold motivation to her colleague.
Firstly, she wants to “rub” Mrs Cox’s “face in it” (WP, 28)4—i.e. in her successful

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entry into the legal profession despite all the discouragement she received fromher former careers teacher (see also ibid., 20). When Lee arrives at Fordyce, herformer school, an undercurrent of symbolic distinction in her critique of her
former educators is more fully expressed when the character’s gaze proudly registers the “marked contrast” between her black Saab and “the most dilapidated
cars [that] belonged to the teachers” (ibid., 31). Secondly, Lee “want[s] to tellthem [the students] that there is an alternative to getting pregnant or working
at Woollies” (ibid., 28), which resonates with New Labour’s vision of the social,dominant at the time of publication of Without Prejudice. Imogen Tyler (2013)
has characterised this social imaginary as a renewed “culturalization of poverty
and disadvantage” through which socio-economic privations “would come to beunshackled symbolically from economic inequalities and reframed as a psychocultural problem” (162). Central to this reframing of the problem of structuralinequality in New Labour’s Britain, Tyler remarks in this context, was the rekindled notion of meritocracy on the one hand, and a new stigmatising ‘underclass’
discourse on the other.
This, I would argue, constitutes the “ideological subtext” (Jameson 1982, 81)
of Without Prejudice and of Lee’s speech addressing a student body “as ethnically
mixed as ever” (WP, 31) in the school’s assembly hall:
Lee turned to Mrs Cox. “[…] You’ve given the school a ringing endorsement for
its part in my success. Unfortunately,” she turned back to the audience, “none ofthat part is true. […] [W]hen I was a pupil here, the only work experience we
could get was shop work; the highest aim we could have, even the brightest ofus, was to become someone’s office clerk. You were never, never encouraged toaim for anything higher. […] This is not about revenge, or ingratitude, or causing
embarrassment to the school. But I promised myself that if I was ever invited toaddress students at Fordyce, I would tell the truth about my experiences here. […]Don’t let anyone put you off, or put you down. Just plan to be a better version ofwhat you already are.” (ibid., 34–35)

Lee’s critique of her former teachers’ low expectations and biases here turns intoa critique of their failure to ignite meritocratic hope in their students, a task Lee
seeks to accomplish by an emphatic sense of voluntarist self-making in that final,
mantra-like ‘instruction’ for how to succeed. What is—on the level of characterand implied author—intended as encouragement can also be read as “an ideological act […] with the function of inventing […] formal ‘solutions’ to […] social contradictions” (Jameson 1982, 79) as crystallised linguistically in that ‘just.’
That contradictory motif of individual success against all structural odds also
informs Evaristo’s own novelistic depictions of black female achievement, mostCl ass in Contemporary British Novels of Bl ack Women’s Social Climbing

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recently in Girl, Woman, Other (2019). However, the latter to some extent rewrites
the fiercely individualist sense of self-reliance that Without Prejudice propagatesby adding a plot twist to one of its post-migrant success stories. One of the subchapters is centred on Carole, who—born to Nigerian academics ‘downclassed’to manual labour after migration to the UK—overachieves her parents’ ambitions for her by becoming one of the high-earning vice presidents of an investment bank in the City. Carole’s retrospective Bildungsroman narrative includes
an invective against her former teacher Mrs King—herself a black female social
climber—that seems to hark back to Without Prejudice. Carole remembers
Mrs King [giving] a speech in assembly on the last day of
Carole’s schooling that her protégé, after much dedicated and hard
work on Mrs King’s part, was the first child in the school’s history to
make it to such a prestigious university [Oxford]robbing Carole of her moment of glory. (GWO, 130)

Girl, Woman, Other revisits this narrative strand in a later sub-chapter with an
awkward encounter between adult Carole and a much-aged Mrs King, the latter
passive aggressively asking for recognition. Carole eventually breaks the discomforting silence between the two by dutifully thanking Mrs King for her help but
the episode—and this narrative strand—ends with Carole actually changing her
mind: “it dawns / on her that Mrs King really did help her when nobody else could
or / would, how could she have not realized this until now?” (ibid., 422). In sum,then, the final chapter of Girl, Woman, Other challenges all-too-absolute notionsof self-making at the centre of the master plot of upward mobility by reinscribing
the social climber’s teacher in the function of a Bildungsroman helper figure.5
Much like Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Zadie Smith’s NW embeds a ‘Black
British’ Bildungsroman narrative along the lines theorised by Stein in a larger
entity that has been characterised as a “composite novel” (D’hoker 2018, 28;
18). The novel’s third and longest part narrates how Keisha Blake, daughter of
Caribbean working-class migrants, becomes Natalie de Angelis, a high-earning
commercial barrister, in a highly fragmented prose that can be read as a trope
evoking the self-un-making experienced by upwardly mobile subjectivities (seeBecker 2024).6 Towards the end of this part, Natalie is invited to give a careers
talk that begins as conventionally as may be expected. However, the way in which
NW constructs this episode soon destabilises the character’s attempted reiteration of the master plot of upward mobility: “She gave a speech about time management, identifying goals, working hard, respecting oneself and one’s partner,
and the importance of a good education. ‘Anything purely based on physicality
is doomed to failure,’ she read” (NW, 291). This evocation of physical desire trig-

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gers a thought about her “[p]oor” low-achieving childhood friend Leah, which
eventually turns into a daydream that resonates with the title of this fragment,
i.e. “Envy,” with this paratextual marker functioning as a metafictional commenton the inventedness of Natalie’s motivational story:7
In between the top of page two and the beginning of page three she must havebeen reading out loud and making sense, there must have appeared to be an
unbroken continuity—no one in the audience was looking at her like she was
crazy—yet she found her mind travelling to obscene tableaux. She wondered what
Leah and Michel, who always seemed to have their hands on each other, did in theprivacy of their bedroom. Orifices, positions, climaxes. (ibid., 291)

Natalie’s envious daydream about Leah and her partner Michel’s otherwise disinterested bond transports readers back to an earlier fragment signifying Natalie’s
awareness of the extent of self-interest involved in her marriage to Frank de Angelis:
Female individual seeks male individual for loving relationship. And vice versa.
Low-status person with intellectual capital but no surplus wealth seeks highstatus person of substantial surplus wealth for enjoyment of mutual advantages,
including longer life expectancy, better nutrition, fewer working hours and earlier
retirement, among other benefits. (ibid., 230)

Significantly, this fragment immediately follows Frank’s offer to have his wealthyfamily pay for Natalie’s pupillage, the final unpaid stage of her training as a barrister, “[t]his last gap [that] was almost too wide to jump” (ibid., 228). Hence, as
readers, we know that Frank is a crucial helper figure in the extra-diegetic, postmigrant Bildungsroman narrative that makes up the third part of NW. However,this is unknown to the fictional addressees of Natalie’s intradiegetic narrationof her success story against all intersectional odds that ends as follows: “‘And it
was by refusing to set myself artificial limits,’ explained Natalie Blake to the collective of young black women, ‘that I was able to reach my full potential’” (ibid.,291). Overall, the way in which NW presents this episode clearly undermines theideological script of self-reliance and self-entrepreneurship that the character isshown to reproduce; it also serves a metanarrative function, reminding readersof this third part of NW that this is in fact not as straightforward a success story
as Natalie would have her fictional addressees believe. The narratorial strategy
also gestures towards a latent generic shift within this third part of NW, fromincorporative ‘Black British’ Bildungsroman to novel of adultery, a long-standing
vehicle for women’s disaffection with an exclusionary bourgeois social order, as
Fredric Jameson (2010, 282–283) notes.

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Contrary to the nineteenth-century novel of adultery that Jameson discusses,
however, novels like NW in fact narrate individual black women’s disaffection despite being incorporated into bourgeois society; it is in this sense, I would argue,that Natasha Brown’s novella Assembly (2021a) can be described, as the author
herself does in an interview, as a “dissatisfaction story” (Brown 2021b). Going
beyond the identity-political framework Brown delineates in said interview, I
read the dissatisfaction at the heart of Assembly as an uncompliant ‘structureof feeling’ that challenges the master plot of individual upward mobility fromthe perspective of an unnamed black woman of working-class origin who has
climbed her way up and into the financial sector.8 Crucially, the careers talk episode opens the novella’s simultaneously narrated main arch:
It’s a story. There are challenges. There’s hard work, pulling up laces, rolling up
shirtsleeves, and forcing yourself. Up. Overcoming, transcending, et cetera. You’ve
heard it before. It’s not my life, but it’s illuminated two metres tall behind me andI’m speaking into the soft, malleable faces tilted forwards on uniformed shoulders. I recite my old lines like new secrets. Click to the next slide. Giant, diverse,
smiling faces in grey suits point at charts, shake hands and wave behind me. The
projector whirrs and their faces morph into the bank’s roaring logo. (­Assembly, 9)This passage highlights the autodiegetic narrator’s troubled and troubling innerawareness of the false forms and formulas in which she casts her life story. The
imagery resonates with Plato’s allegory of the cave in that the narrator presents
herself as an object that projects images “two metres tall behind” her, whilst she
is fully aware that this is a manipulated and manipulative representation of herlife story, received as truthful by the assembled “malleable faces” (ibid.). With theexplicit second-person address, narratee and implied reader are reminded how
often they have encountered the neoliberal mantra of individual achievement
as the narrator showcases its endless repetition of the same stock imagery—“pulling up laces, rolling up shirtsleeves”—and dismisses its worn-out storyline
with the satirising phrase “[o]vercoming, transcending, et cetera.”On the next page, the narrator explicitly reflects on the complicity in the reproduction and distribution of the master plot of individual achievement that is
expected of her:
I do these talks—schools and universities, women’s panels, recruiting fairs—every
few weeks. It’s an expectation of the job. The diversity must be seen. How many
women and girls have I lied to? How many have seen my grinning face advocating
for this or that firm, or this industry, or that university, this life? (ibid., 10)188K atrin Becker

The narrator’s self-ironising image brings to mind Frantz Fanon’s (2021) analysisof “the grinning stereotype Y a bon Banania,” one of “liver[ies] the white man
has fabricated” (17). That ‘grin’ recurs in Fanon’s own argument and the sources
he consults (see 32; 92; 152–154; 177), and is analysed as a figuration of obedience in the face of colonial oppression and/or continued cultural and economic
exclusion. Conjuring such an ‘Y a bon’ figuration at the intersection of racism
and class, Assembly invites readers to critically reflect on the narrator’s giving
herself up as a grinning object used to sell the alleged meritocratic diversity of
the institutions and companies she advocates. Her highly analytical narrating
self thus voices her concern with the ideological pitfalls of presenting her life
story as a black woman’s successful struggle for a good life against all intersectional odds. What is more, the title of this first chapter—“ASSEMBLY”—not only
names the setting of the character-narrator’s careers talk, but as a paratextual
marker it also signposts the significance of this passage for the novella as a whole.
The initial phrase “[i]t’s a story” further introduces a sustained self-reflexive
trope of storytelling that—in this instance—serves to highlight the constructedness of the master plot of upward mobility against all odds—and also signals
a metanarrative concern with the kind of story Assembly tries not to tell. Thisnarratorial strategy appears to be central to Brown’s deconstructive agenda, who,in writing Assembly, “was concerned with the construction of myth,” inspired by
Roland Barthes (Brown 2021c). The character-narrator’s running self-reflexive
commentary on her careers talk can indeed be read as a Barthesian mythology“deciphering” (Barthes 2013, 234) “ideas-in-form” (ibid., 221).
Assembly further harks back to Barthes’ mention of a demythifying strategy deployed by literature, namely the “murder of literature”: “it is well known that some
went as far as the pure and simple scuttling of the discourse, silence—whether
real or transposed—appearing as the only weapon against the major power ofmyth: its recurrence” (ibid., 246). The narrator indeed considers silence as “theleast harmful choice” (Assembly, 23) when asked to reiterate the master plot of individual achievement against all odds. At the same time, the passage from Barthes
can also be connected with the narrator’s decision to renounce her company’s
medical treatment for her recently diagnosed breast cancer, which she regards as“an opportunity […] [t]o stop the endless ascent” (ibid., 57). As cultural anthropologist S. Lochlann Jain (2010) notes, what dominates the cultural imaginary ofcancer are narratives of survivorship that overemphasise individual agency (174).
These success stories, Jain writes, “propagate[] the myth that everyone has thepotential to be a survivor—even as, ironically, survivorship against the odds requires the deaths of others” (ibid., 175). The heroic figure of the individual fighter
against all statistical and structural odds is where the neoliberal imaginaries ofCl ass in Contemporary British Novels of Bl ack Women’s Social Climbing

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cancer survivorship and classlessness intersect, a discursive overlap that Assembly builds on. Just before we learn about the narrator’s refusal of treatment, herdoctor hails her as a “fighter” (Assembly, 44). We may connect her refusal of thisinterpellation with the passage that first explicitly discloses her death wish:
Generations of sacrifice; hard work and harder living. So much suffered, so muchforfeited, so much—for this opportunity. For my life. And I’ve tried, tried living
up to it. But after years of struggling, fighting against the current, I’m ready toslow my arms. Stop kicking. Breathe the water in. I’m exhausted. Perhaps it’s timeto end this story. (ibid., 13)

It seems that the metanarrative trope of storytelling that runs through Assembly
migrates onto the level of plot, yet another aesthetic strategy to deconstruct themaster plot of upward mobility against all intersectional odds by projecting thenarrator’s death from cancer as a renunciation of incorporation.
I have thus far neglected the level of story: the main narrative arch progresses
towards a garden party at the illustrious family estate of the narrator’s likewise
unnamed boyfriend, to celebrate his parents’ wedding anniversary and to be engaged to him, it seems. Although there is barely any plot-like causality in theconventional sense, the highly fragmented present-tense narrative is shapedby an overarching question, namely whether the narrator can “bring herself towant […] a complete melding with the class that enslaved her” (Biggs 2021, 31).
What is more, the character-narrator’s self-advancement is repeatedly shown tonecessitate traversing political as much as economic lines of division, such as
crossing the “divide” separating her from Occupy protestors when she first begins working in the City (Assembly, 46). The evening before said garden party,
her prospective father-in-law checks her political affiliations: “‘Tell me how you
ended up in finance. Why aren’t you shaking up change in the Labour Party?’ Hewinks. ‘Ushering in a new world order.’” (ibid., 62). Tellingly, “the son” assures
his “intrigued” father that his wife-to-be is associated with the Blairite factionof the Labour Party, while the character-narrator remains silent (ibid.). The father’s half-serious but nonetheless piercing question thus remains unanswered
and continues to hover in the narrative, as a reference to the ‘Corbyn revolution’feared by the wealthy in 2019, about a structural redistribution of wealth andpower from top to bottom.9 Assembly can thus be read as novel(la) of black female achievement that critically reflects on the ideological pitfalls of being incorporated into the higher echelons of British society, of joining those holding mostpolitical and economic power in post-imperial Britain (in matrimony), a union
more readily embraced by Natalie in NW and Carole in Girl, Woman, Other.

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Narrating the Odds and Alternatives: Destabilising theMaster Plot Through Novelistic/Narrative Structure
Contrary to the open-endedness of Assembly, the final part of Zadie Smith’s NW
reinstates Natalie as Bildungshero as she “return[s] to the fold” (Stein 2004, 23) ofher domestic middle-class life. However, as I have elaborated elsewhere (Becker
2021; Becker 2024), the novel’s overall composite structure articulates a dialecticof life chances and lack thereof that fundamentally unsettles the master plot of
upward mobility, foregrounding the structurally contingent social costs of anindividual’s ‘battle to achieve.’ At the same time, Nick Hubble (2016) has convincingly argued that NW speaks to the “fall of working-class agency” (202),“the collapse of collective working-class culture” (ibid., 206) in the late twentiethcentury. Hubble locates that decline in an encounter between two male characters, “white working-class socialist Phil Barnes” (ibid., 205), a sixty-year-old
unionised postal worker, and Felix Cooper, a black thirty-two-year-old car mechanic precariously employed at a small garage. While Felix “is happy to listen to Barnes,” his “values no longer have much purchase in the contemporary
London” that Felix navigates (ibid., 206). Although this is certainly the case on
the level of character perspective, the novel as a whole seems to offer a different
evaluation, as is implied by Felix’s response to Barnes’ attempted agitation: “‘I’m
more about the day-to-day’” (NW, 117). Given that the part centred on Felix isa one-day narrative that ends with his death, NW seems to suggest both the difficulty and the need to renew Barnes’ ‘traditional’ class politics in a twenty-firstcentury Britain marked by precarious working and living conditions.
Although Girl, Woman, Other is less radical in its approach to the masterplot of individual achievement against all odds, the cultural pull of neoliberal
meritocracy is nonetheless destabilised through the novel’s composite form. We‘meet’ twelve protagonists in quasi-stand-alone narrative strands mediated in
twelve consecutive sub-chapters bearing the respective character’s first name astitle, grouped into sets of three that make up four chapters (a fifth chapter brings
together characters of each set of three and is followed by an epilogue). Accordingly, Girl, Woman, Other certainly “resembles the genre of the short story cycle” in that the sub-chapters “can be read independently but are expanded andrevised in other stories/subchapters” (Carrera-Suárez and Rodríguez-González
2021, 94). Of particular relevance for my purposes here is the sequencing of
textually distinct yet intratextually connected storylines that pulls black female
achievement against all intersectional odds into contiguity with the respective
social climbers’ daughter or mother, former teacher or peer.10 Building on Wolfgang Iser’s (1972) classical theorisation of reading as “the process of anticipation and retrospection, the consequent unfolding of the text” (296), I argue that

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Girl, Woman, Other pre-structures marked “retrospective effect[s] on what has
already been read” (Iser 1972, 283), calling on readers to ‘concretise’ (ibid., 279)
a recursive aesthetic. Hence, although the novel prominently features “characters[who] achieve individual success through tactics of social mobility that leverage
hard-won class-based inclusion against racial dispossession,” “[w]inning within
the capitalist system, rather than overturning it” (Photopoulos 2022, 201), therecursive interplay of perspectives works towards exposing the ideological underpinnings and pitfalls, the structural contingencies and personal costs of thislogic.
The following analysis mainly focuses on two sub-chapters that offer recursive perspectives on the novel’s most high-flying achiever, Carole. Beforehand,
it is worth revisiting Photopoulos’ (2022) thesis—that Girl, Woman, Other“valoriz[es] property acquisition” (202) as a means of alleviating ‘racial dispossession’—with a view to the interplay of two other characters’ perspectives/subchapters: Amma, a successful black-feminist playwright and theatre director(GWO, 1–40), and her daughter Yazz, a nineteen-year-old student of English
literature (ibid., 41–74). To begin with, Amma’s eventual “grateful” home-ownership (ibid., 34) is retrospectively refracted through Yazz’s critique of her mother’scomplicity in the gentrification she complains about “as if she herself wasn’t afrequenter of the artsy hotspots” (ibid., 44). Amma’s “hopeful” entry into the“mainstream” with a production at the National Theatre in London (ibid., 2) inturn resurfaces, in Yazz’s perspective, as condescension: “ever since she landed
the National gig she’s got very snooty about / struggling theatre mates, as if shealone has discovered the secret to / being successful (ibid., 43). Finally, the vision of black-feminist empowerment through individual achievement as staged
in Amma’s play and narrated in her sub-chapter contrasts with Yazz’s emergent
awareness of an economic divide within her group of ‘sistahs’ or “brown girls” atuniversity, with “super-rich” Nenet refusing to “play by / the rules” of the ‘battle
to achieve,’ buying rather than earning her degree (ibid., 72–73). At the sametime, Yazz is shown to be equally aware of her own dependence on living rentfree with Amma when she leaves university “with a huge debt and crazy com- /petition for jobs and the outrageous rental prices out there” (ibid., 42).
Moving on to Carole, it is noteworthy that her wish to “be gone” from theeconomic precarity of her childhood (ibid., 128) is reflected in the eventual erasure of several black female characters associated with these conditions in her
sub-chapter. Her former school friend LaTisha is reduced to an ‘underclass’ caricature in Carole’s imagination (ibid., 145); her former teacher Mrs King is last
mentioned when Carole remembers entering Oxford University to study maths(ibid., 130); her mother Bummi last occurs when Carole recalls her encouragement to carve out space for herself at Oxford (ibid., 133–134).11 However, these192K atrin Becker

characters are not ‘gone’ from the novel; instead, the following sub-chapters essentially narrate these characters’ life stories and thus fill readers in on their attimes divergent perspectives. I have already commented on how the novel’s final
chapter reinstates Mrs King as a helper figure for Carole’s surging ascent; thesub-chapter that immediately follows the one centred on Carole delves into hermother’s perspective (ibid., 150–188) and reinscribes her as yet another crucial
helper figure for Carole’s transformative-incorporative Bildungsroman narrative.
Hinted at in Carole’s sub-chapter in a vignette showing how Bummi nurtured
her daughter’s interest in and comprehension of maths (ibid., 121), Bummi, welearn in the subsequent sub-chapter, in fact holds a “first / class [maths] degreefrom a Third World Country […] mean[ing] nothing in her / new country,”
where she only finds work as a cleaner (ibid., 167). In Pierre Bourdieu’s terms(2002), even if Bummi’s academic credentials cannot be converted into economic capital, Bummi’s embodied cultural capital is a crucial condition for Carole’s
educational trajectory.
In addition, when her husband’s death turns her into a single mother, Bummi
decides she must “become someone who employed others, rather / than someone waiting to be employed” (GWO, 170). In order to raise the initial economic
capital, she turns to the only person in her social circle not “living hand / tomouth,” namely the bishop of her church (ibid., 172). Her “first transaction” as“a businesswoman” is sex offered in exchange for “an envelope of cash / […]a low-interest loan to be repaid over two years,” knowing that “it would havetaken twice as long to save a quarter of it on her / salary” (ibid., 173). This episode and character construction of course evokes the neoliberal subject figureof the entrepreneurial self (Bröckling 2016) and might be read as an embraceof the ensuing mantra of individual responsibility. However, the episode underlines the brutally limited means at Bummi’s disposal as a migrant and single
mother dependent on low-paid wage labour wishing to “rise above my stationin order to / raise my child as the sole wage-earner in a parenting situation ofone” (GWO, 170). That this escape from precarity is predicated on what is essentially an act of prostitution—depicted, from Bummi’s perspective, as both
violating and degrading, but nonetheless necessary “to elevate her- / self and herdaughter” (ibid., 174)—can be read along the lines of Jane Elliott’s critical notionof neoliberal ‘suffering agency.’ That is, the ‘choices’ open to Bummi—precarity
or prostitution—evoke the “imprisoning nature of suffering agency, the way inwhich choices made for oneself and according to one’s own interests can still feel
both imposed and appalling” (Elliott 2013, 84), rather than an emphatic senseof opportunity. What is more, the character’s perspective explicitly ironises thenotion of ‘equal opportunity’ when she imagines her future as “proprietor of her
own cleaning com- /pany, which would be an Equal Opportunities Employer,Cl ass in Contemporary British Novels of Bl ack Women’s Social Climbing193

like all / other cleaning companies,” wishing her late husband were around “toshare the joke” (GWO, 170). Overall, then, the sub-chapter draws attention to thesocial contingencies and personal costs of Carole and Bummi’s intergenerational
narrative of incorporation into the bourgeois socio-economic order.
The interplay of Carole and Bummi’s perspectives further teases out an intergenerational pattern of symbolic violence as theorised by Bourdieu. In thesymbolic hierarchy of cultural practices that serves to legitimate socio-economic
inequalities, Bourdieu (1998) argues, “dominated lifestyles are almost always
perceived, even by those who live them, from the destructive and reductive pointof view of the dominant aesthetic” (9). Initially feeling out of place as a black
woman of working-class origin at Oxford—“crushed, worthless and a nobody”(GWO, 132), Carole ventures on a path to acquire ‘legitimate’—i.e. recognisably middle-class English—ways of speaking, eating, dressing one’s body andfurnishing one’s home (ibid., 136–138). However, Carole’s continued processof self-making after university is—much like in the third part of Zadie Smith’s
NW—presented in less-than-celebratory terms: “and if she has to cripple herself to signal her education, talent, / intellect, skills and leadership potential, so
be it” (ibid., 140). What is more, Carole’s makeover, refracted through Bummi’s
perspective at the beginning of the subsequent sub-chapter, is shown to reproduce the symbolic violence she felt subjected to at university. For instance, Carole begins “looking haughtily around their cosy little / flat like it was a fleapit,”
refrains from eating with her hands, “side-glancing her mama for doing so, as if
she was a savage from the jungle” and uses words—highlighted in italics or scarequotes—sounding not only alien but “ironical” to Bummi (ibid., 151). Hence, inthis case, the recursive interplay of Carole and Bummi’s perspectives and subchapters brings to the fore both the personal costs and the ideological pitfalls of
self-(re)making.
Finally, the sub-chapter centred on Carole’s former teacher Mrs King—i.e.
Shirley—offers yet another angle on Carole’s success story, narrating the character’s professional and personal trajectory from the 1980s to the 2010s, with asustained focus on her shifting work ethos and teaching philosophy (ibid., 217–
248). It opens by presenting a young Shirley as the first black teacher in a ‘multicultural’ state comprehensive school, dedicated to “the principle of social mobility” (ibid., 229) through education and helping “those who are disadvantaged”(ibid., 228), imagining that “every step she takes will raise these children up, shewill leave no / child behind” (ibid., 220). The sub-chapter ends with a view of
a disillusioned, overworked teacher clinging to “mentoring projects” for “a few
promising children […] of obvious intelligence” with “variable” results, which“makes teaching slightly more bearable” (ibid., 248). The narrative arch connecting these two ‘Shirleys’ maps developments in the public educational sector from194K atrin Becker

the 1980s onwards onto the narrative. Beginning with “large classes / and lack ofresources” (ibid., 234), “it was bad and got worse when the Thatcher government
began to / implement its Master Plan for Education” including league tables andthe national curriculum (ibid., 235). Shirley’s social history then fast-forwards
to the 1990s and 2000s, recording rising rates of utmost poverty among the children’s families as well as juvenile delinquency (ibid., 236–237). Although Shirley
begins adopting the ‘underclass’ rhetoric propagated by New Labour, she is also
shown to be increasingly aware of the “the great middle- / class scam”: “parents‘helped’ them [their children] so much with their / homework they appeared
to be child prodigies” (ibid., 240). Ironically, this would also pertain to Carole,
Shirley’s “first and greatest achievement” (ibid., 248), and her “exceptional graspof maths” (ibid., 245). Overall, then, Shirley’s teacher perspective renders visible the social and (politically made) institutional contingencies that form the
backdrop of ‘the battle to achieve’ in/via education, foregrounding that except
for her own individual commitment to “giving these kids a fighting chance /[…] everything else was against them” (ibid., 234). Carole’s success story against
all institutional odds is thus recontextualised as an utter exception to the rule,rather than a hope-inducing model to be emulated.
Thus, Girl, Woman, Other, much like NW and Assembly, narrates intersectional transclass experience in a way that problematises the master plot of upward mobility. The novel likewise juxtaposes that experience with glimpses ofcollective modes of class-based agency aimed at alleviating socio-economic inequality on a larger scale. As Sonya Andermahr (2021) notes, “the only characters
involved in [such] class politics are men” who are “almost always seen throughcritical or mocking eyes” of the female protagonists, while black women’s experiences of class-related inequalities never seem to trigger any political alliances onthat basis (2–3); hence, “it is class politics that ends up being othered” (ibid., 4).
Indeed, (both black and white) male figural bearers of socialist class politics are
frequently othered from the perspectives of black female character-focalisers but
the most sustained instance of such othering is also the most politically fraught
one, namely the ambivalent portrayal of Sylvester, an old friend of Amma’s who“still ran his socialist theatre company, The 97%” (GWO, 32). The rendition ofAmma’s perspective juxtaposes her ridicule of Sylvester’s “revolutionary zeal”(ibid.) with her own sense of entitlement (and desire) to enter ‘the mainstream’
and reform it from within (ibid., 33), yet this outlook is also ironically refracted
through the elitist perspective of Roland, yet another social climber and Yazz’s
biological father. The only passage throughout Girl, Woman, Other that entersthe mind of a (black) male character ends with a quoted interior monologue(Cohn 1978, 12–13) in which Roland addresses Sylvester: “you can keep yoursocial conscience, Comrade, because he / Roland, has something far more pow-

Cl ass in Contemporary British Novels of Bl ack Women’s Social Climbing195

erful up his sleeve and it’s called / CULTURAL CAPITAL!!!” (GWO, 410). Thus,
while Sylvester mainly functions as a vehicle for other characters’ self-assurances,
he may also be read as a socialist spectre that haunts the novel’s social climbers.

Outlook: The (Im)Possibility of Intersectional Class Politics
for Below?
In sum, the post-millennial British novels of black female achievement discussed
above approach the master plot of individual upward mobility in aesthetically
productive ways that allow us to reflect on the ideological underpinnings andpitfalls, as well as the social contingencies and personal costs, of individual advancement against all intersectional and structural odds. These novels are thus
resistant to all-too-affirmative readings of the success stories they tell. At thesame time, these narratives of individual advancement are to some extent contrasted with glimpses of collectively organised struggles for economic redistribution. Such political perspectives are all the more relevant for the study of literary
representations of socio-economic inequality in neoliberal Britain if we follow
David Harvey (2007). Neoliberalism, he argued, is a “political project to achieve
the restoration of class power” (ibid., 16) to “economic elites” (15) who pushed
back against “working-class institutions such as labour unions and political parties of the left” (ibid., 11–12). As Magnus Nilsson argues in this volume, literature
may work towards (re)making class-conscious collectivities, as a basis for restoring class power for below, by presenting common experiences of socio-economic
conditions. In contrast to the literary representations of precarity that Nilsson investigates, the novels surveyed in this chapter imply a more ambiguous politicaloutlook. While the transclass experience certainly emerges, in and across thesetexts, as the singular yet shared condition defined by Jaquet (2014, 19), individual
striving for socio-economic betterment is shown to be in tension with more collective modes of agency to that end. NW seems to lament the decline of the latter
since the late twentieth century, whereas Assembly remotely registers attempts torenew class politics aimed at socio-economic redistribution from top to bottom
in the 2010s. Girl, Woman, Other in turn reinstates doubts about the genderedomissions of ‘traditional’ socialist class politics but also appears to be (almost
literally) in two minds about the identity-political strategy to change ‘the establishment’ from within by joining it. And yet, given that all three novels—unlike
Without Prejudice—undermine ideologically charged valorisations of individualtransclass trajectories, they may also educate desire for the extraliterary possibility of an intergenerational, intersectional class politics that pushes back against
those holding most political and economic power in a more sustained fashion.

196K atrin Becker

Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Literary-historical accounts of British migration literature usually begin with the“immigrant writers” of the so-called ‘Windrush generation’ (Vadde 2015, 61), which“takes its name from the Empire Windrush, a German troop-ship commandeered by
the British during the war, which arrived in Tilbury in 1948 carrying about 500 West
Indian migrants” (ibid., 62).
For an overview and discussion of more recent scholarship on the Black-British Bildungsroman, see Becker 2024.
And yet, it is worth pointing out that Jaquet’s more recent contribution to the debate
is more attuned to the ideological function of transclass narratives that I am interested in here. For instance, Jaquet (2023) speaks of transclass trajectories as part of “asociety that generates its own deviations and oppositions while remaining fundamentally identical to itself ” through a “dialectic of reproduction and non-reproduction inwhich classes are perpetuated through a transclass flow,” “a movement that maintains
immobility in the guise of change” (182).
For in-text citations referring to the literary texts I analyse, I use the novels’ titles (i.e.
NW and Assembly instead of Smith 2013 and Brown 2021a) or abbreviated versions(i.e. WP for Williams 2021 and GWO for Evaristo 2020).
The conception of Carole’s character links with Jaquet’s (2014) emphasis on the social
constitution of transclass individuals (99–102). Much like the autosociobiographicalnovels discussed by Jaquet, Girl, Woman, Other narrates Carole’s transclass trajectorywith a sustained focus on her childhood, her familial and social background, her affects, and romantic attachments (see Jaquet 2014, 220), some of which I shall elucidatein the following section.
This again provides a link with Jaquet (2014), i.e. her comment on the idea of the selfmade individual: “rien ne se fait à partir de rien, mais toujours à partir d’une histoire.
[…] [I]l s’agit tout autant de se défaire que de se faire” (182).
My use of the term ‘metafictional’ here and ‘metanarrative’ below is based on Fludernik (2003). In addition, the character’s ‘narrated monologue’ (see Cohn 1978, 13)
may also be considered as an example of double-voicing in transclass novels (see Textor in this volume), in this case communicating both the character’s ideological investment in and cynicism towards neoliberal classlessness as well as signalling the implied
author’s ironic distance.
According to Raymond Williams (2015), a ‘structure of feeling’ stems from the “experience of the work of art itself,” as “a pattern of impulses, restraints, tones” that canbe traced in its literary form and language, and related to “the material life, the socialorganization, and […] the dominant ideas” of its historical moment (159). In fact, Williams argues that, a ‘structure of feeling’ arises from the “interaction” between the dominant ideas of a time and “the whole process of actually living [the] consequences” (ibid.).

Cl ass in Contemporary British Novels of Bl ack Women’s Social Climbing197

In early September 2019, three months prior to the general election, the Financial
Times ran a series of articles titled “The Corbyn Revolution” that detailed (and essentially warned against) the consequences of Jeremy Corbyn’s election manifesto for
economic and financial elites (Financial Times 2019).
10. My wording here is indebted to Caroline Edwards’ (2019) theorisation of the “networked novel” (15).
11. The phrase ‘to carve out space’ is indebted to Stein (2004, 30) where it signifies black
Britons’ transformative-incorporative entry into the British public sphere.
9.

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PART 4PERFORMING CLASS:
MATERIALITY AND
AFFECT

4.1
Affected by Discomfort
Class and Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre
Marissia Fragkou

Introduction
In her introduction to the edited collection Smashing It: Working Class Artists
on Life, Art and Making It Happen, working-class playwright, poet and activist
Sabrina Mahfouz (2019) writes:
Today more than ever, let’s celebrate the genre-shifting, world-changing art being
made by working class [sic] artists in the UK. Let’s remind ourselves that for every
crucial article detailing the depressing lack of working-class representation acrossthe creative industries, we need to celebrate the working-class artists leading theway in their fields, telling their stories the way they need to be told. (9)Notwithstanding Mahfouz’s optimistic and celebratory assessment of the current
work produced by working-class artists in the UK, her statement articulates a
deep concern regarding the difficulties and barriers they continue to face within
the cultural industries. Following Mahfouz, this essay examines current theatre
work created by working-class performance makers in the UK through a detailed discussion of particular dramaturgical approaches whilst also considering
the material conditions for artists and creatives in relation to precarity, class andneoliberalism.
Celebrating the multiple class identities that compose twenty-first century
British theatre necessitates intersectional and decolonial approaches which seek
to question regimes of knowledge production (Bala 2017). Such approaches
build on the significant work carried out by feminist and post-colonial thinking
and their intersectional perspectives towards social inequalities (Tyler 2013, 157;
Collins 2019, 1). “Class inequality,” Katie Beswick (2020) suggests, “is inherently
intersectional, always entangled with injustices related to race, gender, sexuality

204Marissia Fragkou

and disability, to the extent that it is difficult to understand the lived experiences
and stigmas produced by distinct identity positions as separate from class” (266).
Contemporary examinations of class identities also require further attention to how class is experienced as a felt reality or, following Raymond Williams(1977), as “structures of feeling.” Current sociological class analysis focuses onclass’s affective dimension; this either concerns feelings experienced by persons
identifying as working class or the negative feelings projected towards them andhow these operate as additional mechanisms of stigmatisation and marginalisation (Skeggs 2012). Affective approaches to class also traverse the study of
the “precariat,” Guy Standing’s (2011) neologism congealing a class formation
based on insecure and hyperflexible labour conditions which “experiences thefour A’s—anxiety, anger, anomie and alienation” (33). “Class feeling” is also, as
Beswick (2020) argues, “an important dimension of understanding how barriers
to access and participation operate in theatre contexts,” and thus it is significant
to view “class as a structure of feeling through which theatres operate—one thatexists beyond socio-economic measures” (267). Viewing class in the theatre affectively further implicates audiences who are invited to engage with class issues
as representation and ponder on their own positions of privilege.
In attending to the above questions and need for expanding methodological approaches when discussing class in twenty-first century theatre, I will be
specifically focusing on two examples of autobiographical work by UK-based
performance makers Scottee and Travis Alabanza. Drawing on feminist affecttheory as a key methodological tool of analysis, the chosen examples will be examined through the lens of ‘discomfort’ as an affective strategy adopted to question normative orthodoxies about class identities and to explore its ‘felt realities’and intersections with gender, sexuality and race. Departing from a Massumian
approach which considers affect as different from emotion, I am here adopting Sara Ahmed’s understanding of emotion as both physiological and sociallydetermined and thus inseparable from affect. In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Ahmed (2004) argues how normativity is by definition exclusionary, as it“is comfortable for those who can inhabit it” (148). More specifically, heteronormativity, she argues, “functions as a form of public comfort by allowing bodies
to extend into spaces that have already taken their shape” (ibid.). I would like toextend this analogy by considering middle-class sensibility as a normative space
to specifically think about theatre institutions as well as theatre audiences andthe spaces of comfort they occupy. In doing so, I will be exploring how Scottee and Travis Alabanza tackle their own vulnerability and precarity to capture
the affects of working-class identities and pose important questions about classprivilege and care.

Affected by Discomfort205

Precarity, Class and Theatre
After some years of apparent obsolescence, class has resurfaced as a legitimate
category of analysis. In the UK in particular, the assumed redundancy of class
was largely buttressed by New Labour’s rhetoric of “we are all middle class now,”or the need to eradicate “class divisions” promoted by New Labour leader Tony
Blair, which has further intensified the stigmatisation of people who might receive state benefits or live in council estates as a “workless class” minority (Blairqtd. in Tyler 2013, 159) or “an underclass” who exist outside of the social system
as “social abjects” (Tyler 2013).
Contemporary considerations of class examine the implications of global insecurities in the context of neoliberalism; such implications can be read as conditions of precarity. A wealth of publications across several disciplinary fields, from
economics, sociology to literature and performance studies, examine precarity
as a nexus of material conditions of injustice shaping contemporary identities.
Judith Butler (2009) describes precarity as “that politically induced condition inwhich certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks ofsupport and become differentially exposed to injury, violence and death” (25).
Drawing on Butler, Isabell Lorey (2015) also distinguishes between precariousness, an existential and a “socio-ontological dimension of lives and bodies” (11),and precarity, which connotes the conditions of inequality and “processes of othering” distributing precariousness (ibid., 12). For Lauren Berlant, precarity refers
to “proletarian labor-related subjectivity,” which has now extended to the bourgeoisie and is “a rallying cry for a thriving new world of interdependency andcare that’s not just private, but it is also an idiom for describing a loss of faith in a
fantasy world to which generations have become accustomed” (Puar 2012, 166).
The above discussions regarding existing inequalities within the field of workand labour, the differential distribution of vulnerability and the quest for care andinterdependency against the backdrop of neoliberalism have become chief concerns in the fields of performance studies. Precarity is discussed with regard to
the material and affective labour and lived realities of performers and creatives(Ridout and Schneider 2012, 6); others have approached it as a representational
trope that speaks to the ethical dimensions of encountering precarious identities
on stage (Pewny 2011) whilst capturing the intersections of vulnerabilities andrisks shaping identities in the contemporary world (Fragkou 2018). In staging precarious identities, that is, identities that have been marginalised or subjected tosocial injustices in the context of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, one has tothink about the various affective devices mobilised through processes of theatrical framing. Arguably, theatre concerned with precarity seeks to cultivate ethicalspectatorial engagement vis-à-vis social injustices and distant human suffering

206Marissia Fragkou(Pewny 2011); it brings audiences closer to those ‘other’ worlds through eliciting
emotions such as sympathy, empathy, pity, anger and compassion. Such an ethicalengagement with precarious identities might also be fraught with complexity. On
the one hand, “[c]ompassion, like other forms of caring, may also reinforce thevery patterns of economic and political subordination responsible for such suffering” (Spelman qtd. in Ahmed 2004, 22). On the other, the bombardment of imagesof suffering which are widely consumed by the public might lead to compassion’s
de-politicisation manifest as “compassion fatigue” (Mestrovic 1997, 56). In this conundrum, representations of the working class can promote voyeurism, encouraging “poverty porn” (Savage 2015, 353), or a false empathy that keeps middle-classaudiences within their own comfort zones, thus re-affirming their biases without
necessarily troubling the very structures that produce those class inequalities.
As a cultural form, the British theatre industry is largely dominated by creatives who occupy certain positions of privilege in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and class and shape how and for whom theatre is made. Recent studies into
inclusion and diversity in the UK’s arts sector demonstrate concerns over theconsistent barriers preventing workforce and audience diversity in terms of ethnicity, race and class (Consilium 2016). As Madani Younis, the former artistic
director of London’s Southbank Centre, argues, there is an urgent need tochallenge how cultural institutions see themselves and who they see themselves
serving. Let’s be honest: if cultural value is dictated by an entrenched elite, is it
any surprise that we have such a narrow understanding of what and who we are?
(Gardner 2015)

In recent years, there have been clear efforts to disrupt such pathologies entrenchedin the theatre sector through the promotion of agendas of diversity and inclusion. In
2014, the Arts Council of England, the most important source of arts funding in the
country, warned arts organisations that their funding will be cut unless they commit to “making audiences, programmes and their workforce more diverse” (Brown2014).1 Further independent initiatives such as Tonic Theatre, an organisation thatclosely works with arts organisations on developing their gender equality and diversity agendas, and the trans-casting statement signed by several theatres committing
to avoid casting cisgender actors in trans, non-binary and gender-non-conformingroles (Trans Casting Statement n.d.), have seen flagship institutions such as the National Theatre pledging to increase the visibility of creatives who identify as female,
black and Asian and improve audience demographics (National Theatre n.d.).
Despite such initiatives, perennial issues still plague the realities of artists fromless privileged backgrounds, raising questions regarding institutional equalityand diversity agendas. In her important study on institutional processes of com-Affected by Discomfort207

mitting to diversity and inclusion, Ahmed (2012) has shown that institutions
might well seem to be making advances towards diversity and inclusion throughthe creation of statements of commitment. Yet these remain “non-performatives:
they do not bring into effect what they name” (119). Selina Thompson (2017),
a Leeds-based performance artist who identifies as Black, female, working classand disabled, speaks about the tokenism that often underpins such institutional
initiatives, which fail to ensure the viability of artists from socially disadvantaged
backgrounds who continue to feel excluded:This system/industry cries out, in a loud, and performative way for people frommarginalised communities to become a part of it—but does not value their healthand wellbeing and the potential realities of their backgrounds enough to make thechanges that would make their presence in that system tenable.

Furthermore, class as an identity marker of inequality continues to remain largely invisible or unspoken within cultural institutions’ agendas for widening participation in the arts. According to Elaine Aston (2020),
barriers to social mobility within the arts have strengthened rather than weakened […]. Unlike gender which is a protected characteristic, there is no protection against social class discrimination. Hence, discriminatory practices perpetuated by the middle-class bias of the profession go unchecked. (21)

In addition, Aston continues, the lack of an intersectional approach in evaluating
privilege creates further exclusions (ibid.). This is justified by the fact that “artsorganisations are still frequently run by cultural elites tethered to old-fashioned
notions of cultural and class identities” (Lola Young qtd. in Arts Council England 2016, 102). For this reason, as Liz Tomlin (2020) stipulates in her study onclass barriers in the theatre industry, “[i]t is vital to keep talking about it [class]
if the socio-economic inequities that are deeply rooted in the theatre-making
ecology are ever to be contested or overturned” (252).
The above concerns about class barriers and the lack of intersectional understandings of class further interlace with the identity of the artist as precarious
worker whose labour is not always valued as work (Jackson 2012, 23). This iscoupled with current models of arts sustainability, which largely adopt a neoliberal ethos and further deepen precarisation and inequalities: theatre in the UK
follows a business model of entrepreneurship, which fundamentally changes therelationship between the artist and the state. Since the beginning of the twentyfirst century, UK arts funding has been considered to be “public investment,”
thus transforming arts organisations into “small businesses that could support

208Marissia Fragkou

the economy, the education of the young people and the social fabric of a multicultural society” (Tomlin 2015, 34). The growth of the cultural industries as
an important economic sector in the UK forces artists to become “artpreneurs”
who internalise and perform the ideological values of market economy, that is,self-interest, individualism, growth and profit (Harvie 2013, 63). Following post2010 funding cuts implemented by the various Conservative governments, theideal of the less state-dependent artist has been further enhanced and is celebrated in the guises of “resilience” and “sustainability” (Arts Council England
2013, 31). This rhetoric poses numerous challenges to theatre makers, particularly those working within small-scale alternative theatre (Field 2013), who are
asked to perform their value by often having to meet market demands while being unable to achieve financial independence and stability and thus being forced
to self-finance their work.
In addition to questions around class and precarity in terms of artistic representation and policy, another significant aspect concerns the politics in representing class identities on stage. After a rich post-war theatre production fuelled
by class issues, in the early 1990s class seemed to slowly disappear from British
theatre—a symptom of a wider decline of identity politics during this period.
Nevertheless, since the 2008 financial crisis, the British stage has been inundatedwith plays that explicitly deal with processes of precarisation and exclusion.2 This
return can be attributed to wider socio-cultural shifts within the context of twenty-first century Britain and the practices of precarisation that exacerbate existingsocial inequalities. With reference to Imogen Tyler’s notion of the “social abject,”Nadine Holdsworth (2021) describes how in the twenty-first century
the English nation is blighted by a number of internal rifts and fissures that pit
people against each other in ways that cast particular groups as threats to the nation, as unruly or demeaned citizens that need to be contained or expelled. (3)Such “threats to the nation” also appear in the guise of “the precariat” (Standing 2011), a class category which resists clichéd representations of people living within precarity, whilst also drawing attention to how their vulnerability “islinked to their structural location in society” (Savage 2015, 353).
Drawing on Standing’s neologism, theatre scholars Peter Simonsen andMathies Aarhus (2020) have coined the term “theatre of the precariat” to describe this resurgence of class on the contemporary British stage:
The plays constituting the theater of the precariat most obviously share thematicfeatures and a concern with characters who belong to the precariat. They are alsoAffected by Discomfort209
marked by an interest in developing different techniques for activating and engaging with the audience’s sense of ethics, both indirectly by staging an everyday
lifeworld that is insecure or falling apart and more directly by addressing the audience as audience, by interacting physically with the audience through theater
space and dramaturgy. (336)

Simonsen and Aarhus’ definition can be applied to autobiographical performance, which “can engage with the pressing matters of the present which relate
to equality, to justice, to citizenship, to human rights” (Heddon 2008, 2) andacknowledges the audience’s presence. Although the notion of the ‘precariat’ canbe criticised for not taking into consideration the intersections of inequalities
within contemporary conditions of precarity, the examples that follow could beclassed as part of the “theatre of the precariat” in that they stage insecure andhostile worlds and interact directly with their audience, and by doing so, theybring to the fore vulnerabilities and a social commentary about the differential
allocation of vulnerability and processes of othering.

Scottee’s Bravado (2017) and Class (2019)
Scottee is a prolific working-class, queer and neurodivergent artist who has
worked across different performance styles that predominantly explore queer
and working-class identities in contemporary Britain. Scottee has been particularly vocal about access and class agency in the theatre; growing up on a council
estate in Kentish Town in North London in the 1990s, he left school at fourteen
without gaining any qualifications or attending art school. He is committed to“making stuff that emotionally disrupts people for better or worse to think a little
bit differently about the world in which we operate” and his work revisits identity
politics from an intersectional point of view (SavidgeReads 2019). This “emotional disruption” of the audience is pursued in his two autobiographical shows
Bravado and Class where he tackles disturbing personal material by examining
the intersections of class, gender and sexuality.
Bravado is “a memoir of working-class masculinity” (Scottee 2017) covering
the period 1991‒1999 which focuses on the performer’s own experience of bullying, abuse and sexual exploitation by his male peers on the council estate he grew
up in. The piece was performed in conventional theatres as well as non-theatre
spaces, typically male spaces such as “pubs, garages, changing rooms” (Scottee
2017, 20) and asked the audience to engage with Scottee’s story by means of aproxy, a volunteer from the audience who is invited to read the script in his place.

210Marissia Fragkou

The piece focuses on “the complexities of feelings, particularly male feelings”(Harvie 2017, 13). In his foreword, Scottee (2017) discusses his own feelings
about working-class men as a mixture of fear and love:
I don’t like being on a train or bus, or waiting in public when groups of workingclass blokes are present, I fear encountering football supporters, stag dos and lads
on a night out—I worry what they might do to me, what they might say, whatmight happen—I fear potential. […] [T]his fear is not one-sided, it’s a mutual fear.
They fear me and my effeminacy. […] To complicate matters, I also love workingclass men. I love their familiarity. (9)Fear acts as a catalyst in Bravado, enabling Scottee to create his performance material about the toxicity of working-class heteronormativity: “this is how maleness and misogyny succeed: they live off our fear and off their potential—it’stime to relinquish it” (ibid., 10). In dealing with his own fears, Scottee uses his
vulnerability as his own act of “bravado,” offering a testimony of the discomfort
that working-class and queer bodies experience.
Ahmed (2014) describes discomfort as “a feeling of disorientation: one’s body
feels out of place, awkward, unsettled” (148). In Bravado, Scottee (2017) sharesdifferent stories from his childhood to his teenage years on the council estate
which made his body feel “out of place”: during the Sunday family pub gatherings where the parents would “encourage us to call each other girlfriend andboyfriend” (25); the same gatherings would transform into battlegrounds of
toxic masculinities ending up in blood. Other scenarios of “compulsory heterosexuality” (Butler 1988, 524) concern Scottee’s failure to rehearse a “masculine”
identity, which would make him the object of bullying and banter and impress a“dose of shame” upon him (Scottee 2017, 31). As Ahmed (2004) argues, shame is
a complex emotion “associated as much with cover and concealment, as it is with
exposure, vulnerability and wounding. […] Shame involves the intensification
not only of the bodily surface, but also of the subject’s relation to itself ” (104).
In one of the sections, entitled “Tears,” the performer narrates a story of when
Scottee’s drunken father would physically assault him and he had to hide in his
parents’ room with his little brother. The tears that follow acts of violence reveal,
as he explains, not remorse but shame and embarrassment, which is intensely
felt by the whole family: “[We are embarrassed] that yet again we’re sweeping
broken glass or boarding up smashed windows. That yet again the neighbours
will know” (Scottee 2017, 37).
In the context of the performance, Scottee’s feelings of shame as exposuretransform into an empowering gesture. Scottee (2017) explains that he wanted
to “remove the comfort” of him sharing his trauma as something that has beenAffected by Discomfort211

resolved, as this would encourage audience complacency (10). Sharing graphic
stories of toxic masculinity becomes an act of vulnerability and an ethical callto empathise and care for working-class queer identities. The onus is primarily
placed on the volunteer, who has so far been “a bloke” (ibid.) and who stands
in for the men who have induced such trauma. By mediating his own experiences of discomfort and “feeling out of place” in spaces where toxic masculinity
is rife through the voice of another male body, he resists becoming an objectof scrutiny and of the “wound fetishism” that underpins “testimonial culture”
and spectacularises stories of pain and suffering (Ahmed 2004, 32). In so doing,
he returns the experience of discomfort back to the audience and particularly
the male volunteer who represents his abusers on the estate. At the end of theperformance, Scottee (2017) narrates the last time he accidentally crossed paths
with his childhood male peers and the subsequent feelings of anger this brief
encounter yielded:
I want them to acknowledge I exist,….that I survived scathed, bruised, battered, bleeding. […]I want their confidence to be in crisis,
to feel they are not good enoughand that they do not belong. […]I want their sexuality to be informed by the violent acts I force upon them. […]I want them to be sorry. […]I want them to love me. (44–46)

One of the volunteers who took part in Bravado describes this experience ofvoicing Scottee’s story to a live audience as a way of sharing another’s pain andtaking responsibility for it: “I’d accidentally stumbled into somebody’s pain andshared it with strangers by making it my own” (Stewart Who? 2017, 19).
Discomfort as dramaturgical strategy also underpins Scottee’s subsequent
performance Class, where he returns to his personal autobiography to impress
upon the audience feelings of working-class identities. The diegetic space of theperformance is once more the council estate, which, as Tyler (2013) argues, mobilises the figure of the “chav,” a “pejorative and ubiquitous term of abuse of andabhorrence at Britain’s poor” who are the subject of “mockery, contempt anddisgust” (ibid., 162; 165). The “chav,” Tyler proposes, as a racialised denominatorneeds to be treated asa figure through which ideological beliefs (the underclass), economic interests(the erosion of the welfare state) and a series of governmental technologies (media, politics, policy, law) converge to mystify neoliberal governmentality by natu-

212Marissia Fragkou
ralizing poverty in ways that legitimize the social abjection of the most sociallyand economically disadvantaged citizens within the state. (ibid., 170–171)

As mentioned above, such practices of social abjection are symptomatic of thewider fissures currently dividing the British nation, which promulgate the logicof an “us” and “them.”
Scottee (2020) purposefully mirrors the above processes of stigmatisationand division to problematise their affective dimensions. Drawing on the semiotic iconography of the “chav,” he evokes the ways in which the working class areoften perceived by contemporary Britain’s cultural hegemony as “social abjects”:
he wears a “red tracksuit, gold earrings, necklaces and rings and a pair of new,white trainers” (1) and puts on a “mock cockney accent” (ibid., 2).
Scottee also directly addresses the audience, reminding them of their own
privilege and spaces of comfort: he specifically draws attention to external features that define middle-class identities or their consumer habits, creating a division between “us” and “them.” As director Sam Curtis Lindsay (2020) notes,
the performance space itself toyed with notions of comfort and discomfort: “thespace would be ‘soft’ using a carpet—like the nicest room in your house you haveto take your shoes off […]. In that softness, we found the danger and the joy inthis story and tried to make it a conversation” (ix). This false feeling of comfort that would allow middle-class spectating bodies to “take up space” quickly
evaporates as Scottee makes them feel conscious of their class identity. In orderto foreground contemporary forms of depoliticisation inherent in narratives of“responsible capitalism” promoted by everyday acts of charity, the audience are
given supermarket tokens to put in a box that is labelled: “Working-class communities need? Money OR Love” (Scottee 2020, 1).
The piece also draws attention to the middle-class composition of the audience and their theatre-going habits:
Good, just seventeen more hours of this shit to go before you are free to grab a
glass of Rosé and tell each what good people you are for coming to see this showby someone you probably wouldn’t invite to a dinner party. (ibid., 4–5)

His provocative tone evokes the feelings of anger which characterise the precariat. Further the mobilisation of discomfort in Class reminds us of the precariat’s
feelings towards its media representations; as theatre critic Ben Walters (2019)
observes, what he names as Scottee’s “theatres of discomfort” place emphasis on
the audience’s privileged position: “If you are middle class you might prefer toavoid a situation in which you will be caricatured, patronised or judged; not everyone, of course, has that luxury.”Affected by Discomfort213

Scottee performing in Class at HOME theatre, Manchester, 2019.
Reproduced with permission © Holly Revell

Echoing Bravado, in Class (2020) Scottee confesses how his feelings of inadequacy and shame have shaped his identity and shares some “trauma-fuelled
memories” regarding his and the rest of the council estate’s abject and precarious living conditions, such as how the black mould in his bedroom contributed
to “childhood asthma attacks” (27) or his fear of “leaving the house at fourteen
because there were threats against my life for being queer” (ibid., 31). It similarly
makes use of discomfort as an act of resisting “wound fetishism.” This is achieved
here through a different reversal of the gaze: at the end of the performance, Scottee reveals two mirrors that point at the audience whilst saying: “I am not doing
this to hurt you. […] I want us to see each other properly without defence. I want
us to acknowledge why we’re here, why we came” (ibid., 33).
Class also reminds us of the precarious position of a working-class artist who
is trying to survive in the context of the neoliberal cultural industries. Whenthe piece was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, a festival circuit that relies on
artists who self-fund their work in the hope that they can gain traction, theatre
critic Kate Wyver (2019) pointed out that: “Class may not be an easy watch, but
at the fringe, a space that continues to shut people out as it gets more and more
expensive, it is an important one.” As Scottee reminds the audience of their privilege, he also uses them as representatives of “the overwhelmingly middle-class
British culture industry” (Walters 2019).

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Travis Alabanza’s Burgerz (2018)
I am young, black, common, trans, grew up on an estate, didn’t go to art school andsuddenly, I am in your meeting room, I am your artist in your gallery taking up
space in the media and writing and selling out debut shows. (Mahfouz 2019, 22)

Non-binary performer and writer Travis Alabanza reminds us of the power
structures that determine the rules of accessibility to the arts and the invisible
affective labour of claiming space in an elite and exclusionary artistic terrain that
requires cultural, financial and social capital. Alabanza is one of the very few
trans artists who have gained recognition in the UK and internationally: they
were the youngest person to secure a residency at London’s Tate Modern at theage of twenty-one and have written two plays that have toured internationally:
Burgerz (2018) and Overflow (2020). They have also performed in Scottee’s Putting Words in Your Mouth (2016), exploring the complexities and contradictions
within the LGBTQ+ community in contemporary Britain.
Alabanza’s autobiographical piece Burgerz explores discomfort emerging fromthe violence of “compulsory heterosexuality” (Butler 1988, 524), which dehumanises and punishes bodies that resist a binary logic. Burgerz examines the intersectionsof gender, sexuality and race; its starting point is a transphobic incident Alabanza
experienced while walking across Westminster Bridge in London in which someone threw a burger at them and called them “tranny.” The incident was witnessed bya few people but no one intervened or asked Alabanza if they were feeling alright.
Burgerz was staged at a time when trans and gender-non-conforming persons
have achieved visibility and recognition; following the Gender Equality Act 2010,
gender reassignment is recognised as a protected characteristic which safeguards
transgender persons in England, Wales and Scotland from harassment. At thesame time, trans and non-binary people continue to experience transphobia,
which has risen dramatically in recent years.3 During the making of the piece,
Alabanza’s research showed that trans persons often experience transphobia in theform of having food thrown at them (Affan 2021, 99). For this reason, Burgerz reflects a collective experience of hostility and transphobia, which victimises bodies
not conforming to “stereotypical social norms” and negatively affects their mental
health and well-being (Ellis, Bailey and McNeil 2016, 213). As Alabanza (2018) explains, “Burgerz has become an emblem for so many other incidents, deaths, actsof violence and harm, that the trans and gender-nonconforming community haveto face every single day. Burgerz, for me, is about archiving the pain in our reality.”
As an emotion, pain is “continually evoked in public discourse, as that which
demands a collective as well as individual response,” particularly regarding oth-Affected by Discomfort215

Travis Alabanza performing in Burgerz at Hackney Empire, London, 2018.
Reproduced with permission © Holly Revell

ers (Ahmed 2004, 20). Although pain fuels compassion, it might also serve tore-affirm relations of power; in the case of Burgerz, Alabanza’s own traumatic
experience of discomfort caused by transphobia is tackled with humour. During the performance, Alabanza uses the burger as a device to re-assemble theirmemory of this particular and other transphobic events and to ask questions
about the violence of heteronormativity; in doing so, the burger becomes a symbol of gender-based and racial violence which fills the lives of trans and gender
non-conforming people with precarity.
Alabanza (2018) invites a cis white male audience member to help them makethe burger as a way of reassuring them that they can do this on their own (20).
The first instruction that the volunteer is asked to repeat intimates how taxonomies and definitions of identity create comfort zones for normative bodies whilst
generating violence for bodies that fall outside the binary: “Travis, before you
can make the burger, it is important you decide the type of box the burger would
go in” (ibid., 21). Alabanza also shifts the discussion to race, reminding us thatgender carries its own repertoire of “correct performances,” which have been
particularly buttressed by colonialism (ibid., 33).
Here the explicitness of the autobiographical material and the direct audienceaddress remind us that whilst the visibility afforded to trans lives in the thea-

216Marissia Fragkou

tre means it might operate as a “safe space,” this does not necessarily guarantee
safety outside of it:
If I walk out of this room right now, leave you and leave like this, like how I want
to be, in these clothes, in this gender, I will be beaten, I will be bashed, I will be
shouted at, I will be hurt. And you will go home. (ibid., 46)This confession brings into sharp focus the violence of heteronormativity (andwhiteness), which allocates differential levels of comfort to bodies, thus limiting
the spaces that gender non-conforming bodies occupy in public (Butler 1988, 522).
Alabanza further emphasises the responsibility of witnessing such acts of violence by drawing attention to the privileged position of the witness. They ask awoman to join them on stage, who is handed the burger. Alabanza (2018) thentells the audience that when they were attacked, their gaze met that of a woman,
who then turned away. The female volunteer reads a text that pledges commitment to solidarity, inviting the audience to consider the significance of allyshipand unity in difference, as well as the spaces of comfort they occupy.
I vow to protect you, as in the plural, as in more than just you. I vow to realise thatin my safety, in my comfort, in my silence, comes your danger, hurt and entrapment. I vow to know that I cannot possibly be free, whilst you the plural are still
hurt. […] When I throw this burger I will throw it, not to hurt you again, but toacknowledge that I have hurt you before. […] An action born out of violence witha hope to turn to a promise. A promise to do better. (59–60)

Conclusion: Towards an Ethics of Care
What can we learn from contemporary theatre and performance focusing onclass identities? The so-called “theatre of the precariat” is concerned with “classfeeling” (Beswick 2020), which emanates from the conditions of precarity anddispossession affecting twenty-first century marginalised identities. In exploring
the complexities of class affects in the twenty-first century, it also draws attention to how class, gender and race interlace as ecologies of precarity. Further, ittakes issue with the audience’s privileges and, for this reason, “the theatres ofthe precariat” explored in this chapter primarily address middle-class audiences
through strategies that create discomfort.
Although both Scottee and Alabanza confess that they do not have the answers
to the questions they pose, their intention to publicly share their private experiences of being at risk allows them to “take up space” in public discourse in orderAffected by Discomfort217

to mobilise allyship and solidarity and “a new world of interdependency and carethat’s not just private” (Puar 2012, 166). This emphasis on care is particularly significant at a time when “care has been—and continues to be—overshadowed bytotalitarian, nationalistic and authoritarian logics that rearticulate and reorient
our caring inclinations towards ‘people like us’” (Care Collective 2020, 15). In
other words, to “put care centre stage means recognising and embracing our interdependencies” (ibid., 22); for Scottee and Alabanza, care is mobilised throughdifference, as they are asking their middle-class audiences to consider both theirprivilege and the possibility for interconnectedness. As shown, their performances unsettle normative spaces of comfort which historically belong to the
middle class and, by extension, also expose the complicity of theatre structures
to the violence of excluding working-class experience. This temporary affective
displacement of privilege mobilised in the examples discussed in this chapter
might work to question how spaces of privilege are created and maintained andto what extent our own practices of care disturb these. In the words of theatre
critic Lyn Gardner (2020), they ask us to question our own ethics of care: “whocares, and do we care enough? Do we care in a way that genuinely makes a difference? Or do we care in theory but not when it really affects us?” (v).

Notes
1.

The Arts Council have since expanded their understanding of diversity to also include
gender reassignment (including transgender) and sexual orientation in addition togender, disability, race and ethnicity.

2.

Some examples include Jez Butterworth, Jerusalem (2009), Stan’s Cafe, The Just Price of
Flowers (2012), Simon Stephens, Port (2013), Alexander Zeldin, Beyond Caring (2014)
and Love (2016), Gary Owen, Iphigenia in Splott (2016), and The Paper Birds, Broke(2014) and Mobile (2016).
According to official statistics published by the UK’s Home Office, the rate of hatecrimes against transgender people increases every year. In 2021‒2022 the number ofoffences against transgender people saw a 56% increase in comparison to the previous
year (Home Office 2022).

3.

218Marissia Fragkou

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Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On Being Included: Race and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham:
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Alabanza, Travis. 2019. “Resolutions for the Common, Black, Queer, Young Kid (andanyone else who may need it).” In Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art andMaking it Happen, edited by Sabrina Mahfouz, 20–23. London: The Westbourne Press.
Alabanza, Travis. 2021. Burgerz. London: Methuen.
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Arts Council England. 2016. Analysis of Theatre in England. Accessed 7 April 2023.
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Aston, Elaine. 2020. Restaging Feminisms. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bala, Sruti. 2017. “Decolonising Theatre and Performance Studies.” Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies 20, no. 3: 333–345.
Beswick, Kate. 2020. “Feeling Working Class: Affective Class Identification and its Implications for Overcoming Inequality.” Studies in Theatre and Performance 40, no. 3:
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Brown, Mark. 2014. “Arts in England told to make progress with diversity or have funding axed.” The Guardian, 8 December 2015. Accessed 7 April 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/08/arts-council-england-make-progress-diversityfunding-axed-bazalgette.
Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4: 519–531.
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Consilium Research & Consultancy. 2016. Equality and diversity within the arts and cultural sector in England 2013‒2016. Arts Council England.
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Fragkou, Marissia. 2018. Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre: Politics,
Affect, Responsibility. London: Bloomsbury Methuen.
Gardner, Lyn. 2015. “Diversity is key to creativity—and British theatre’s challenge for2015.” The Guardian, 6 January 2015. Accessed 7 April 2023. https://www.theguardian.
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4.2
The Redundancy
Playing Production in Academic Capitalism
Sarah Pogoda

The Socialist Production Play: Redundant?
In 1956/7 GDR playwright Heiner Müller completed his socialist production
play Der Lohndrücker (lit. The Wage Squeezer).1 Production play is a theatre genre mainly known in the former Socialist Bloc, as these plays dealt with the problems and challenges the socialist societies in-their-making faced in the industrial production sector, for example scarcity of resources and skilled workers. In
most cases, these plays presented so-called Helden der Arbeit (Heroes of Labour),workers whose unprecedented work ethics benefited the socialist economy, usually by increasing factory output. They were meant to act as role models. The castfor staging the production plays were often recruited from factory workers andthe plays were performed to an industrial workforce as the audience.
Der Lohndrücker was based on the historical case of Hans Garbe, who in thevery beginnings of the GDR rebuilt a furnace under the most adverse conditions—namely while the furnace was in use. Putting his life at risk, Garbe secured productivity and production goals. In Müller’s text Garbe is named Balke,a word play on Balken, which is German for ‘beam,’ and by also referencing thehistorical moment of socialism-in-the-making, Balke’s name indicates the central role of hardworking workers, as a beam is one of the principal horizontal
structural members of a building. Similarly to Garbe, Balke also opts to rebuild afurnace while production is in process, but in so doing he faces a number of challenges, from red tape to existing conflicts within his team. The workers mistrust
Balke and sabotage his endeavour, as his operation raised production norms,
causing his co-workers’ wages to be reduced in relation to the level of productivity expected from them, while Balke is rewarded with a substantial bonus, hence
the title of the play. In a sense, Balke is both a hero and an enemy of the working
class for whom the GDR was meant to be built, and to whom the state was meant
to belong. In this ambiguity Müller brings ideological and class conflicts pre-

222Sarah Pogoda

dominant in the early GDR to stage and adds a critical dimension that is rather
unusual in the traditional production play. Müller’s play was initially quite popular, but quickly fell out of fashion, as the political developments in the GDR of
the 1960s reframed existing conflicts and made the production play redundant.
Only in 1988 did Müller himself bring it back to stage for the Deutsche Theaterin Berlin, at the same time admitting that it was actually “not the most up-todate play at the moment” (Suschke n.d.; translated by me).
Today, more than 30 years later, the years of building up socialism and theconflicts in industrial production in the early GDR seem more distant than ever.
Still, when reading Der Lohndrücker with students in 2018, I felt reading a precise description of the working conditions and conflicts to which I was exposed
to as an employee of a British university. Was I misapprehending Müller’s play or
my working conditions? Müller once suggested that reality might never change
to such an extent that certain plays could not be written or staged anymore.2
Moreover, in his seminal study on Der Lohndrücker, Falk Strehlow attributes
Balke not exclusively to the early GDR but reads him “as a phenomenon of collective/social/historical working conditions or liminal experiences” (Strehlow
2006, 66; translated by me). Was it possible that the socialist production play was
relevant beyond its immediate GDR context? Bewildered, I commenced a creative research process for staging Der Lohndrücker. About nine months later, on asunny Sunday afternoon in Bangor, North Wales, a group of about 20 people followed my invitation to see the resulting multi-media site-specific performance,
entitled The Redundancy.3
Welcomed in the foyer of the New Main Arts Building of Bangor University,
the audience was introduced to the proceedings of the day and equipped with acomprehensive programme4 as well as MP3 players and headphones. The wordsof welcome and the event’s programme guided the audience through fifteen stations at three different locations, announced the timing for live performancesand contained instructions for a playlist.5
The audience was encouraged to navigate through buildings, rooms and outdoor sites on their own terms, pause and observe, listen to songs and audio files,
pass some time or move on, gather or split apart. In the first location, Bangor
University’s Main Arts Building, the audience would find the building devoid ofpeople—typical for a Sunday afternoon, particularly during the semester break.
The absence of staff and students created an eerie atmosphere increased by thehaunting media installations: the audience walked through corridors in which
incorporeal voices were lamenting strategy papers on how the university would
focus on ‘blue chip’ grant income, on how an increasingly competitive higher
education (HE) market sets imperatives to prioritise curriculum developments
in subject areas with large and/or growing demand, or on how best to claim aThe Redundancy223

Remains of the old Britannia Bridge
Structure, staging Balke calling
colleagues to increase productivity(Bangor, 2019).
Reproduced with permission © Huw
Jonesmarket advantage. At the same time, the title of the performance, The Redundancy, suggested a fatalistic premonition, given that academic life was marked
by the absence of those who usually embody it. The suggested incorporeality of
the academic workforce paradoxically made it possible to focus on the material
conditions of academia, instead of supporting the assumption of academia as
an intellectual occupation or immaterial vocation. The university building wasstaged as an installation of academic work, with some rooms and offices in theireveryday shape, and with others re-arranged to host films or performance, orfunctioning as topical installations. Depending on how audiences engaged with
the installations on offer, they would have seen embodied variations of working
conditions, such as people shovelling horse manure in the pouring rain,6 young
academics running back and forth between their offices and the department’s
printer, the installation of a standing desk, or a theatre director physically agitated and angrily smashing his mobile phone on the ground. This arrangement
linked pre-industrial forms of labour with the digital age and marked academia
as a still relevant site of labour whose material conditions are performed andthus are sewn into the fabric of academic bodies and subjectivities.
The second location connected the knowledge economy to the history of thelocal industrial economy and the haunting past of the British Empire. Britannia
Bridge was completed in 1850 and provided the necessary rail link for convenient travel to and from Ireland/Wales. Its construction employed stonemasons,224Sarah Pogoda

clerks, brick makers, sailors, contractors, engineers, riveters, foundry workers
and carpenters from the local area and beyond. That sunny day in June 2019, itsremains provided the stage for one performer who called on to his co-workers towork extra hours to ensure that all production targets were met. Later, only moments after the audience listened to the anthem The Internationale, they would
learn about how those very co-workers physically attacked the performer for his
enforcement of changes and increased productivity targets at their workplace.
The third location was private accommodation. Upon entering, the audience
walked through the projection of a film showing individuals reading parts of
Müller’s Hamletmaschine. Walking further down the corridor, they could turninto the left-hand bedroom re-arranged as an archival installation with documents, props and films, allowing engagement with the research process of theperformance, and at the same time staging the invisible mental workload thattroubles academics’ sleep. The right-hand bedroom on the corridor was shut,
only showing a note on its doors saying: “Scene 12 had to be cancelled due tosick leave.” The corridor finally led into an open-plan kitchen, where free foodand drinks were served. The audience stayed for hours to discuss the four-hour
performance and how it related to their own working conditions.
The Redundancy blends immersive theatre, installation art and site-specificperformance, and used multi-media tools (e.g. audio, music, film, online tools
and apps, a printed programme). It did not stage a theatre production of the play
Der Lohndrücker, but rather assembled loosely related stations to make visible
working conditions in UK HE. In its beginnings, the project was not planned totake this form—nor this title. Indeed, these were the outcomes of a nine-monthlong research process that was determined by the very working conditions inquestion. The following essay will thus focus on the conditions of the research
process and the form of the performance.

Beginnings
UK universities are responsible for the academic standards of all awards grantedin their names, and the quality of students’ teaching and learning. Universities
have generated processes for top-down management and monitoring of academic quality and standards. Academic, professional and support staff are obliged toreview and apply frameworks, policies and procedures which universities want
to use to foster a culture of continuous improvement—a culture, it should to be
noted, which is one of auditing excess, not even sparing students, and which has
expanded vastly since the so-called “quality revolution” (Newton 2002) in the
1990s. This was further spurred by the Further and Higher Education Act 1992,

The Redundancy225

which pushed massive changes in UK HE, including a diversification and risein student cohorts, which resulted in a demand to align and monitor standards
across HE institutions (Laughton 2003, 310f). Particularly for pre-1992 universities, the growing advance of internal quality monitoring arrangements that alignwith monitoring activities through external quality bodies meant a severe shift
from rather laissez-faire organisation to explicit management (Deem 1998, 48).
Moreover, the substantial increase of tuition fees in 2011 and the shift to students as customers (GOV.UK 2011), representation, consultation and feedback
mechanisms turned the question of academic standards into that of student satisfaction. For teaching and learning, the so-called ‘Quality Assurance Agency
in Higher Education’ sets subject benchmark statements and regularly checks
on universities’ Quality Assurance procedures. Peer-based validation and revalidation, annual programme monitoring, external examiners, school, college anduniversity committees, module evaluation and staff–student liaison committees
are instruments most universities use.
Student feedback on one of my modules, entitled “Divided Germany,” suggested that students felt the length of the core readings for the module difficult tomanage. Responding to this, I changed my syllabus and introduced Heiner Müller’s play Der Lohndrücker, replacing a 200-page novel. Der Lohndrücker is a playof only nineteen scenes, most of minimal length. It allowed me to still discuss thecomplex interdependencies of economy, politics and culture in the early yearsof the GDR, without asking students to read a text that was felt to be too timeconsuming. Thus, my engagement with Müller’s text is a result only of the shifts
in academic production, in this case towards the prioritisation of customer satisfaction. Though replacing the novel was not imposed by academic authorities, I
felt a rather intangible pressure to respond to students’ evaluation. This pressure
was fed firstly by the increased dependency of my job on student numbers, which
seem to improve with better student satisfaction and student experience rankings, and secondly by the implicit imperatives of the quality assurance forms academics are made to complete at the end of each academic year and which are ofcourse part of the customer satisfaction regime in British HE. The GDR moduleis thus perceived as a commodity, designed and delivered by an academic worker.

The Neoliberal University as a Socialist Production Play?
Discussing the play with students, I started to talk explicitly about the very working conditions to which I was exposed to as an employee at a British university—
in my case, a university that was in the process of restructuring due to financial
woes. But how could it be that a play dealing with issues of production in early226Sarah Pogoda

Socialism (as in the case of Der Lohndrücker) reverberated with neoliberal realities at British universities?
Recent theories on neoliberal capitalism identify the close entanglement between HE, universities and capitalism, whether in political, economic or cultural
terms (Allmer and Bulut 2018). Academic labour is based on and shaped byinformation and communication (Fuchs and Sevignani 2013, 257), which renders universities agents in information capitalism or the knowledge economy.
‘Academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004)
thus has prominent features such as marketisation, growing managerial governance and increasing competitive pressure. In a very short time, competition inacademia has come to be defined in terms of economic instead of intellectual
prestige.7 This is not only a result of enforced New Public Management (NPM),
but also of the marketisation of HE under New Labour, when Britain imposed
tuition fees, which now stand at £9,000. At the same time, government grants touniversities continued to decline. Today universities are 70% funded by tuition
fees.8 Universities compete for paying customers, customers who pay for education as an informational commodity, a commodity created by universities. Thismeans universities operate not only on the intersection between public sector
and productive industries, but also as conduit to the service sector. The justification for promoting competition in education and research is based on the belief
that education and research excel only when they obey market dynamics that
apply in productive industries or the service sector.
As Mark Fisher (2009) explains in his seminal essay Capitalist Realism, the restructuring of HE has created a quasi-market and implemented a culture of competition and auditing,9 on all aspects of research (REF, PURE),10 teaching (TEF,
QA) and administration.11 British universities delight in competition, indeed
celebrate it: students and institutionally nominated committees create annual
awards and prizes for outstanding achievers among university staff (Student-Led
Teaching Award, Equality Role Model Award, Career and Employability Award),
which later can be used as mandatory evidence when applying for promotion.
That being said, in the UK, universities are not private companies but charities.
The means of production are therefore not owned by private capitalists, and academics do not generate surplus value. This seems to exclude the HE sector fromthe class debate. And surely, isn’t academia a vocation rather than labour as a productive force (Weber 1946)? But maybe the romantic perception of academia asa vocation obstructs the true material reality of working in academia in the UK?
Indeed, in recent years, the UK government has further enabled universities
to access private investments (McGettigan 2013, 128), and to act similarly to private companies (e.g. investing on the stock market, outsourcing, etc.). As such,
universities operate in real estate, tech industries or hospitality, and thus often

The Redundancy227bind themselves in fixed performance agreements with creditor banks. False
investments, high levels of debt and interest obligations have caused financial
strain in many universities.

From Lohndrücker to Redundancy
This was also the case for my employer, which carried out two rounds of socalled restructuring measures in 2017/18 and 2018/19—in the meantime, a third
was added in 2020/21. This included suspension of promotions, cancellation of
automatic wage increases, research budget cuts, sale of estates, closure of entire
departments and finally job cuts. The latter had priority and enforced a traumatising deep-cut restructuring of the whole university—at this point, three times
in a row. The resulting loss of more than 300 jobs in three years has always beenreferred to in technical jargon as ‘redundancies.’ Redundancy is a labour law
term defined on the UK government’s official website as follows:
Redundancy is when you dismiss an employee because you no longer need anyone to do their job. This might be because the business is:• changing what it does
• doing things in a different way, for example using new machinery• changing location or closing down
For a redundancy to be genuine, you must demonstrate that the employee’s job
will no longer exist. (GOV.UK. n.d.)In the UK, traditional modes of academic self-governance have almost fully
been replaced by top-down management practices (Park 2013). This came withnew expectations about the role of academic workers (Deem 2004), particularly
as regards budgetary responsibility in times of enhanced resource dependency(Slaughter and Leslie 1997). In this climate, university management often delegate the burden of justifying redundancies to faculties or schools themselves,
via so-called budgetary responsibility. Faculties and schools must write theirown business plans, in which they identify any so-called ‘redundant staff ’ (notby name, but in the job description and FTE).12 As a result, colleagues—mostly
involved in the writing up of these three-year plans themselves—become competitors.13 We write the business plans, of course trying to save all members ofstaff, but at the same time we try to distinguish ourselves from other colleagues
as indispensable by taking on additional tasks despite the already unmanageable workload. With universities in dire financial straits and recruitment freezes,
the “reserve army” (Marx and Engels 1968, 661) of unemployed academics is228Sarah Pogoda

growing (Lin and Chiu 2016), increasing pressure on high performance for theemployed academic wage earner—the threat of being made redundant resultsin willingness to accept unbearable working conditions. According to a 2021
survey run by the University College Union (2021), “staff in higher education
are working an average of 50.4 FTE hours per week—more than 2 unpaid days
each week” (26). The regulation, teaching technologies and research funding in
the UK today increased academics’ dependence, as they do not own the meansof HE production (libraries, certification, rooms, technology). And without employment academics risk not being able to afford the means of their livelihood—putting them in the same position of dependency as the traditional proletariat.
However, as it was redundancy that university management used as leverage tosilence staff regarding increased workloads, and not the falling in wages suggested by the title of Heiner Müller’s play, I changed the name of the artistic researchfrom Der Lohndrücker to The Redundancy. At Bangor, staff work more than theircontracted hours, and are thus paid less, the implicit reward being the hope thatthey may pass on the cup of redundancy.14 In the end, our willingness to accept
increased workloads provided the means to justify redundancies.
Engaging with Müller’s play made me question the dialectics of my own
role—at the same time compromising and compromised—within the conditionsof academic labour more openly than—but alongside—union actions.

Horseshit Jobs
Most of the tasks filling up the two days of unpaid labour are of an administrative
nature and feed the auditing processes or customer satisfaction priorities (UCU
2021, 33), directly or indirectly delivering the neoliberal university under which
my colleagues and I suffer. Such tasks are experienced as detrimental to performance, job satisfaction or mental health, as they have little to do with researchor teaching. I therefore started to wonder why my colleagues and I were still
delivering these tasks, which were reinforcing the neoliberal mode of HE. Whatis our relationship to labour? Why do we continue to act as overachievers similar
to Balke (Allmer 2018b)? Do we consider our unpaid labour heroic?
In his play Herakles 5, Heiner Müller refers to the fifth labour of Herakles, thecleaning of the stable of Augeas. But different to the Greek myth, Müller’s playshows Herakles and the cleansing not as a heroic action, but as trivial work. Herakles is thus not a heroic god-like figure, but simply willing to work.15 The text
inspired me to invite colleagues and friends to a farm on Anglesey where they
were asked to shovel horseshit from one end to the other end of a manure heap.
Partly accompanied by workers’ songs, partly without music, we explored ourThe Redundancy229

willingness to work, our perception of ‘horseshit jobs,’ and whether the pointless repositioning of the manure heap could gain any heroic notion or meaningfulness. Involving a physically strenuous task, at times in the pouring rain,
Herakles 5 made visible all the participants’ almost unconditional willingness towork—labour as an end in itself. Despite our best efforts, however, there was no
notion of heroism to it, rather that of an existential fatalism. The increase in thenorm—after about an hour a second wheelbarrow was fetched and the groupasked to find ways to increase the efficiency of the work—changed little in thiswillingness; instead participants started discussions about improvements. The
strong physicality of the experiment furthermore highlighted the reciprocity ofsubjectivity and work. Considering David Graeber’s pamphlet against so-called
Bullshit Jobs (2019), we see how Herakles 5 simultaneously questions simple dichotomies or devaluations of certain forms of work and work ethics. If work is
indeed an anthropological force, labour disputes need to include an inquiry intomeaningful and meaningless work.

Efficiency, Efficiency at Any Price
With this fatalistic willingness to work in mind, I felt that I wanted to create aspace for colleagues to start conversations and explorations on working conditions at Bangor University, and our roles within these conditions. The accelerated pace of the restructuring and the increased workload that came with it hardly
allowed any critical engagement with the redundancy process.
Initially, I envisioned a Brechtian ‘Lehrstück’16 stage production of Der Lohndrücker with my colleagues as the cast to bring together the concrete historicaleconomic constellations of the two realities, that of a furnace in the GDR in its
early years and that of Bangor University in 2019 in the UK. However, my firstcall out did not elicit any expressions of interest. One colleague merely pointed
out that it would be helpful to know about the required time commitment—
providing yet another example of the shortage of spare time due to an excessive
workload. I therefore started to experiment with forms of performativity which
would enable participation as part of daily working routines or outside of working hours but with minimal commitment. Here, the line “Efficiency, efficiency
at any price” from Scene 5 of Der Lohndrücker became the project’s catchphrase.
Scene 5 caught my eye more than any other scene, as it presents a precise description of the plant’s situation, and correspondingly, with only slightly tweaked
wording, the scene would contain the working conditions of Bangor University
under restructuring, and thus the difficulties I encountered in staging the play.
In a nutshell, these were: no budget, no staff, no resources, and heavy workloads.

230Sarah Pogoda

Second call out tocolleagues for The
Redundancy project,then still titled The Scab
(Bangor 2019).
Reproduced withpermission © Huw Jones

As such, the scene offered an excellent exposition of the conflicts of the play—aswell as insight into the production conditions which would inform its staging.
After work, four temporarily employed colleagues joined me in the beautiful
evening sun for a stroll along the shores of the Menai Strait, but instead of recreational activities, we were there to film the slightly reworded Scene 5. By doing so,
we embodied academic subjectivities who invest leisure time in pursuing their
vocational passion for their research (Gill 2010; Jaffe 2021).
Following the catchphrase, we ran the scene on the spot, without rehearsal, in
single shots only, and the cast had not spent any time preparing their lines, as I
handed out the script only minutes before shooting.
Actor 1: I’d only like to tell you, Sir, this won’t work. A schedule that’s based on
the assumption that colleagues and friends will be available over 2 months ofproduction is irresponsible, if not absurd, with the workload everybody is in. One
dropping out, and the performance will face chaos!
Actor 2: (Looking into playwrights, not very attentive) We are facing chaos, Mister.
We’re restructuring an institution. That spells: Efficiency, efficiency at any price.
Actor 1: Maybe efficiency will be the price. I’m washing my hands of it, I’d only
like to have pointed that out.
[…]
Director: (enters, talking on mobile phone) Listen, Schurek, I need them. Am I
supposed to work with my bare body? (pauses, listens to the person on the phone)
What does that mean, all our cast has been allocated? I have not received anyone.
(pauses, listens to the person on the phone) I know that we are supposed to generate academic research, impact and students and not art and stuff. I am not asking
anyone to break rules. (pauses) No, I am not willing to make sacrifices. (stops thephone conversation and throws the phone on the floor. Director turns to the 2 actors)

The Redundancy231
We are supposed to do a 21 person play with three actors. Our production playwill be a chamber play. (exit)
Actor 3: (enters, with smart phone in hands) I need something on production
outputs for my PURE Profile.17
Actor 1: That will be tough.
Actor 3: How are we doing with the performance?
Actor 1: No boot walks by itself alone.
Actor 3: What’s that?
Actor 1: First somebody’s got to put it on the foot.
Actor 2 (to Actor 3): I’ve got something for you, colleague. Wait here, I’ll get thedirector. (Actor 1 exits. Silence. Actor 2 comes back with Producer)
Director: Do you know what a production play is?
Actor 3: A theatre genre mainly known in the former Socialist Bloc, as these plays
dealt with the problems and challenges the socialist societies in-their-making
faced in industrial production sector. Often, the cast of these plays were recruitedfrom factory workers, and performed at relevant production sites.
Actor 1 to Actor 2: Well, maybe she knows all theatre history by note?
Director: We are short of workers, after the redundancies. We’ll have to cancel
our performance, if further people bail on us. The scenes we were recently rehearsing will need reediting as actors had left.
Actor 3: Sabotage.
Director: Redundancies! Workloads!
Actor 3: I see. Objective obstacles.
Actor 1: (to the director) So, you say, it is impossible to do the performance withthose left?
Director: I was saying, the play requires 14 actors. That is the norm, the script setsyou. The producer has just told me, we will do it with what we have. What remains
to be done then: outsourcing, pre-recording, digitisation and blue sky thinking.
He said. (All exit in different directions)

The scene focuses on the conflict constellation between academic duties andartistic commitment, but also provides the viewer with necessary explanations(genre: production play; background: redundancies, PURE, etc.) and introduces
the threat that the production play might be cancelled. Conditions would only
allow a chamber play, since a chamber play usually consists of four characters.
However, though the scene might appear like a chamber play—as only four actors performed—it was rewritten into this form (the original scene requires nine
actors) due to the conditions of production, and thus truly remained a production play. Via re-entry, the production piece would not turn into a chamber play.
And this applied for The Redundancy as a whole, as its form reflected the con-

232Sarah Pogoda

ditions of its production. Indeed, The Redundancy applied the very means of
production that the tweaked script for Scene 5 had anticipated: “outsourcing,
pre-recording, digitization.” In this manner, the video recording of Scene 5 wasused as exposition for the performance of The Redundancy and was shown to
the whole of the audience only shortly after the welcome. In the following I will
discuss example applications of outsourcing, pre-recording and digitisation in
the production of The Redundancy.

Experiment I: Subdivision and Pre-fabrication of Scene 5
As a matter of redundancy, I decided to perform Scene 5 once more, but in its
original script. Via email, I asked nine of my colleagues for help. Each of themreceived only the text of one of the characters in Scene 5. I instructed them torecord their text with their smartphones and send the recording to me for editing.18 In this way, I could have reduced their mental load, since engagement, evenunderstanding, of the conflict in Scene 5 was neither possible nor necessary, but
I reproduced the sense of ‘alienated labour’ that is intrinsic to most processes ofauditing students19 and ourselves.20 Furthermore, I was able to reduce my colleagues’ time investment to a minimum. However, during the time-consuming
editing of the audio files, it became apparent that I had to invest time later in theprocess that I believed I had saved earlier. The reduction of the time investment
for my colleagues led to a maximisation of the time investment for me. For the
performance, the audio recording was played in the Bangor University Council
Chamber, a representative meeting room in the historic wing of the Main Arts
Building, often in use for meetings of the Executive Committee.

Experiment II: Outsourcing and Digitisation of Scene 8a
Another experiment consisted of outsourcing production and mobilising invisible labour resources, thereby creating a network, which is a typical form of production in the post-Fordist economy, especially in the information sector (Castells 1996). Instead of working with colleagues in Bangor, I asked friends outsideof Wales (Germany, USA, England, Sweden) to help with a digital performanceof Scene 8a. I created a Google account for each character, and sent the accountdetails and the text of the whole scene to each volunteering friend. Using Doodle
Poll, we decided on a one-hour appointment (14 May 2019, 10 pm CET) to log
in with the characters’ profiles in a Google Docs document. I was registered as
the stage director, so I worked in italics and also recorded the digital live performance as a desktop film with QuickTime. Step-by-step, each character typed out
their lines when it was their turn. As Google Docs displays the account name of

The Redundancy233

the person typing, the flickering account name in the document thus embodied
the character in real time. This digital live performance lasted twenty-seven minutes and six seconds. Some friends reported stage fright.
For the performance, I compressed the desktop film to five minutes and twenty-five seconds by speeding it up by 400%.21 I added a soundtrack, composedby a local musician. Using various industrial noises, the soundtrack created alink between the industrial reality of the GDR play and the knowledge industry of the university, whose reality of digital mediation in teaching and research
was applied using Google Docs. Adding to this, I uploaded the video file to a
Blackboard course—the virtual learning environment in use at Bangor University—that I created specifically for the project. On the day of the presentation,
the audience gathered in a group and watched the video on the central screen in
the Multi-Media Lab after witnessing how I opened the Blackboard application
beforehand in order to play the clip.

Experiment III: Who is Speaking?
Another experiment resulted from my observation that I increasingly heard
variations of statements from the play in meetings, or that I could read them inthe strategy papers disseminated by university management for review by staff.
I decided to exaggerate this observation and selected phrases from the play, andhanded one each to my colleagues, including those who never responded to mycall to participate in the Lohndrücker experiment. I asked everyone to use theirphrase as often as possible in any situation over the course of a week. Some colleagues replied that they often wondered whether the other person was saying aphrase from the play or making an authentic statement, since they could easily
place their phrase afterwards as if it were part of the written dialogue of the play.
The superimposition of fiction and reality made both ambiguous. This was further supported by feeding results of the experiments back into the system. For
instance, we put out three issues of a fictional newspaper called The Daily Worker.
Similar to the character of the journalist in Der Lohndrücker, The Daily Worker
reported on heroic work achievements but also events (e.g. disappearances ofworkers) from Heiner Müller’s play as well as from Bangor University. Each issue
was distributed to my co-workers’ pigeonholes22 in order to blur the boundaries
between the fiction of Müller’s Der Lohndrücker and everyday academic working
reality. This way reality regains its potentiality, as its fictionalisation challenges
the imperative of necessity of how things are. Such potentiality enables us to imagine a transformed reality, which in the case of Bangor University at that time
was often perceived to have no alternative (see also Fisher 2009).

234Sarah Pogoda

Production, Play and Class Consciousness
The Redundancy emerged from the consecutive loop of redundancies, increasing
workload and efficiency regimes, further informed by the means of production inacademia—means which differ significantly from those depicted in the original
version of Der Lohndrücker. Müller’s text was marked by their absence, most profoundly in the installation for Scene 12, in which Balke’s co-worker Krüger is incapable of continuing his work on the furnace due to severe health concerns. The
Redundancy did not show this scene, neither in the performance, nor film or audio, but simply displayed a note on a closed bedroom door in the private accommodation, saying: “Scene 12 had to be cancelled due to sick leave.” By the re-entryof the means and conditions of production, the artistic form of The Redundancy
showed the economic, cultural and institutional framework of HE in the UK.
The choice of the genre of the production play enabled me and my colleagues to
explore our vocational mindset, which has been co-opted by mechanisms of academic capitalism to become a means of self-exploitation. Our idealisation of work
(McRobbie 2015) is exploited by HE employers, particularly to justify and enable
redundancies. Though Angela McRobbie’s argument in her monograph Be Creative
primarily dissects the ideology of creativity outside of the academic labour market,
applying it to the mindset of academics shines a light on how the neoliberal governmental regimes of self-entrepreneurship and creativity suspiciously converge withthe vocational mindset of the autonomous academic intellectual. The romantic ideaof academia as a passionate and rewarding vocation offers fertile ground for exploitation. A young hardworking person in precarity settles for the promise of successfully obtaining a permanent contract, which again holds the false promise of middle-class status. Similar to the creative industries parsed by McRobbie, academic
reality is that of portfolio careers, project culture, multi-tasking and uncertainty.
Instead of reproducing the trajectory of the autonomous and individual
overachiever, The Redundancy clearly enabled the participating colleagues to explore and experience new forms of communal solidarity and co-creation without
necessarily reprogramming their mindsets. In this sense, did The Redundancy
also generate class consciousness? In the process of restructuring, the then vicechancellor visited schools and departments as a cynical exercise in staff culture.
Those colleagues who had been involved in The Redundancy welcomed the vicechancellor by papering the corridor with posters showing lines from the playor quotes from activists. A futile gesture, sure, but one which would not have
happened if it had not been for The Redundancy. The vice chancellor noticed
and decided to visit the school a second time, as he felt it had shown the mostunease with the changes brought about by the restructuring. His visit coincidedwith the ongoing national unionised industrial action in UK HE. The national

The Redundancy235

dispute was initially only on changes to pensions, but later expanded to pay gaps,
casualisation and precarity, workloads, and falling pay. The Redundancy enabled
staff and union members to translate the macro-activism and its campaign into
practices of micro-activism in their immediate daily experience and by doing so
tailoring the campaign to the specificities of their locality.
But what is the role and position of The Redundancy within academic capitalism? On the one hand, The Redundancy is a product of academic capitalism andemerged as such by deploying its means and mechanism. On the other hand, The
Redundancy re-appropriated these elements and generated a space and time formicro-activism. For example, I might have used university resources (facilities,
printers, camera equipment, digital tools, software and working hours) but not todirectly benefit the university’s productivity and more in the notion of what Michel
de Certeau (2014) terms “faire la perruque” (13ff.). In a similar vein, Sarah Bernstein and Patricia Malone (2021) refer to punk-feminist DIY in terms of appropriating ‘resources’ of the university to explore the resistive and liberatory possibilities
in existing within the institution but as a non-institutionalised subjectivity (130ff.).
However, this essay adds one further twist to The Redundancy. The insights
and knowledge generated in the course of the micro-activist process is re-enteredinto capitalist valuation when I presented a paper on the project at a conferencein Berlin and when I present The Redundancy as a research project, its performance as a research output, papers as research activities and, last but not least,
this essay as a research output to potentially be considered for the next REF. Now,
my colleagues’ and my own undoubtedly meaningful activities in and outside of
our working hours are rendered as unpaid academic research. My drive to create a space of lived academic vocation is rendered ex post facto academic labour.

Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

The English translation by Carl Weber uses the title The Scab, which is misleading, as itsuggests a different conflict to be negotiated in the play (Müller 1990, 23–56).
In Mülheimer Rede, Müller was sharing the hope for a world in which plays such as
GERMANIA TOD IN BERLIN could not be written anymore simply because a changed
reality would not provide for it (Müller 1989).
The trailer can be viewed here: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/01Trailer-Redundancy-Save-The-Date_comp.m4v.
Programme can be viewed here: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/07_
Programmheft.pdf.
The playlist included audio performances of scenes from Der Lohndrücker, asoundtrack composed by Alan Holmes for the project, as well as a number of workers’

236Sarah Pogoda
protest songs and songs varying themes from the play, e.g. Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
or Joseph Beuys’ JajajaNenene performance from 1968.
6. A video clip can be viewed here: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/09Herakles-01-comp.m4v.
7. For a discussion of the concept of academic capitalism, see Schulze-Cleven et al. 2017.
8. In England, the situation for arts courses is even bleaker, as they experienced further
50% cuts in government grants for teaching (Weale 2021).
9. On this see also Mark Fisher in conversation with Mark Fuller (Fuller 2009).
10. REF = Research Excellence Framework. The REF is a process of expert review, carriedout by expert panels for 34 subject-based units of assessment, to provide accountability for public investment in research or to inform selective allocation of funding
for research, i.e. the REF is an instrument to increase competition and performancepressure in academia: https://www.ref.ac.uk/about-the-ref/what-is-the-ref/. PURE is a
Research Information Management System that enables ongoing auditing and surveillance of academic performance in respect to research activities. It is public facing but
offers increased data capture for internal purposes: https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb/
solutions/pure.
11. In particular, the latter implemented the absurdity of an auditing of the auditing, particularly in surveilling students’ engagement in classes or communication with tutors.
12. FTE = full-time equivalent, which refers to the number of hours considered full-time.
13. A conflict we reflected in a video clip, entitled “Academic Cannibalism,” appropriating a scene from Heiner Müller’s play Die Schlacht. An excerpt can be viewed here:
https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/02-Video-Academic-CannibalismAusschnitt_comp.m4v.
14. Similar mechanisms are in place for precariously employed staff who work extra hours
in the hope to gain secure employment in the future (Allmer 2018a, 60).
15. See Müller (2000), and for insightful essays on Herakles 5, see Riedel (1997) andLehmann (1996).
16. Brecht envisioned the genre Lehrstück as an experimental form of modernist theatre

for exploring the possibilities of learning through acting, including but not limited toplaying roles, adopting postures and attitudes.
17. PURE is a Research Information Management System that allows all research activities to be efficiently managed and thus monitored. All university employees whose
employment contracts include a research component must enter all their activities
into the system in a timely manner. The information posted there is transferred to theuniversity’s website. The publications entered there are evaluated for their suitability
every seven years in the national REF (Research Excellence Framework). Depending on their ranking in the REF, universities receive state research grants. The PURE
profile is also crucial for promotions. See also: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/researchinnovation-and-impact-office/pure.php.en.

The Redundancy237
18. An excerpt can be accessed here: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/06_

Audio-Szene-5_Ausschnitt.mp3.
19. An electronic surveillance tool records all contacts with students in and outside ofclass. Students submit extension requests or report circumstances affecting their academic performance electronically via a so-called Request Center, generating transparent metrics for analysing student experience.
20. The university must report its annual financial costs to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and these costs have to be split between teaching, research andother using a methodology called Transparent Approach to Costing. Staff must fill inan online form on how they spend their time between teaching, research and other,on a percentage basis rather than numbers of hours or days, thus the survey does notallow any data on real working hours.
21. I wanted the real working hours not to be visible in the final product. It was not entirely
successful, since the unusually fast blinking cursor in the Google document made theacceleration of real time visible, but an exact determination of the acceleration (by fourtimes) remained intuitively impossible. This disruption prompts the viewer to question the relationship between product and working time. To watch an excerpt, visit:https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/08-Szene-8A-Ausschnitt_comp.m4v.
22. See the issues here:
Daily Worker 1: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/03_Daily-Worker.pdf.
Daily Worker 2: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/04_Daily-Worker.pdf.
Daily Worker 3: https://lfbrecht.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05_Daily-Worker.pdf.

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4.3“The View Is Nice,
but You Can’t Eat It”
A Poetics of Precarity in Bait (2019, Dir: Mark Jenkin)
Daniel Brookes

Introduction
The title of this essay is taken from the advertising material for Bait, which, inturn, was appropriated from UK charity Church Action on Poverty in their campaign to create food banks in Cornwall. The phrase sets the metaphysical andthe material as related but curiously counterposed. For England’s southern- andwesternmost county, “still a land apart” (Beacham and Pevsner 2014, 1) owing
to its unique admixture of industries and ancestries as much as its geographicalcomposition and extremity, this relationship between person, culture and place
was not always so fraught. Across Cornwall, the remnants of ancient populations(in the form of megaliths) and extractive industries are visible, indicating theintertwining of labour and community practice extending from the Stone andBronze Ages, through the Christian annexation of this corner of the island, andinto the era of a place dependent upon fishing and leisure. Bait, the first feature
by Cornish director Mark Jenkin, suggests that the visitation of rentier capitalism, described by Guy Standing (2016) as the situation in which rentiers “deriveincome from possession of assets that are scarce or artificially made scarce,” is aforce which alters this long-standing relationship between place and people. ‘The
view’ is that fetishised and idealised component of a place, separated out by commodity form, obviating the difficulties of the longstanding social order: the needfor cultural practice, the need to maintain social formation, and the need to eat.
Local people disenfranchised by an ‘affordability gap,’ in which median salary
falls beneath the requirement for a mortgage, has contributed to rising tensions
in conurbations deriving income from rural tourism across England and Wales.
According to a November 2022 study by the University of Exeter, only six Cornish postcodes featured ‘positive affordability’ (Williams and Lawlor 2022) for
residents, while a quadrennial study of multiple deprivation in Cornwall pub-242Daniel Brookes

lished in 2019 showed that “primary types of deprivation in Cornwall’s worse
affected neighbourhoods relates to income, employment, education, skills andtraining and health and disability” (Cornwall Council 2019).
It is this reality that frames Bait (2019) and constitutes its central tension.
Martin, a fisherman, has sold the family home to the Leighs, a London-based
couple who use much of the property for seasonal leisure and generate passive
rental income from a converted loft previously used for storing nets. Now living in social housing on the outskirts of town, Martin commutes by car to theharbour, where the parking space typically reserved for fishermen is given over
to tourists. The boat from which Martin and his estranged brother Steven fishedwith their father (who appears as a ghostly presence throughout the film) has
been converted for pleasure cruises, creating a familial schism. Cultural practice (fishing) and the necessities of food are shown to be interrelated, but thealienation from labour and losing traditional footholds in a particular place that
Martin experiences further reifies through fractures in the social formation. The
village pub, ornamented with remnants of its association with the nautical, closes
in winter and is filled with teenagers from out of town in summer. The sociologyof the everyday of Henri Lefebrve, be it his analysis of the production of space(“social spaces interpenetrate one another and/or superimpose themselves on
one another” (1991, 86)) or on the role of modern man and leisure (on the roleof the café: “where the regulars can find a certain luxury…where they can speak
freely…where they play” (2002, 234)), is reflected throughout Bait in a way that
activates its mise-en-scène above the level of mere backdrop, suggesting the vitality of its inhabitants and determining the historical procedure of its social form.
At three crucial layers of culture, place and work, Martin is alienated. British cinematic drama in the post-Thatcher era is not short of these triply alienated and situationally trapped figures; they populate the works of Ken Loach andMike Leigh. These figures account for dimensions of women’s suffering in works
such as Naked (1993) and Nil by Mouth (1997), underline emasculation and rage
in Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) and This is England (2006), and are rendered comedic by the unlikely acts undertaken to find a way forward (Brassed Off (1996)
and The Full Monty (1997)). These works are not just thematically and politicallybound but are also broadly operative in the mode of social realism that has driven a great deal of British visual narrative drama across television and film sincethe 1950s. This connection has several implications for its cinema, but the two I
shall utilise in order suggest how Bait differs are these: (a) British social realism
is typically concerned with an “anti-poetic” and “secular” (Williams 1977, 64)
aesthetic notionally divested of mythos that attempts to show reality ‘as is’; and(b) the understanding of social hierarchies derives, via a complex lineage, fromthe descriptions of Karl Marx: the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”243

As a counterpoint, British cinema has also featured works which show broadly
non-realist approaches to the effects of Thatcherite politics and social class (in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover (1989), and the bawdy
escapism of Shopping (1994) and Trainspotting (1996)). Though there is intersectionality in Greenaway, these works do not reflect the ways in which class dynamics have shifted in the broad aspects of Conservatism they attack, heightening
their polemic quality by invoking mythic and historic structures of class rather
than mapping their new contours. Guy Standing’s taxonomy of social classes
in Western economies attempts to sharpen distinctions. Middle earners are nolonger automatically a homogenous bourgeoisie, but a combination of the salariat, proficians, technical workers, and a shrunken form of the former working
class that has the greatest social utility (e.g. lorry drivers, builders, electricians).
Beneath those, but above the underclass or lumpen proletariat, is the precariat:
The precariat has class characteristics. It consists of people who have minimal
trust relationships with capital or the state, making it quite unlike the salariat.
And it has none of the social contract relationships of the proletariat, whereby labour securities were provided in exchange for subordination and contingent loyalty, the unwritten deal underpinning welfare states. Without a bargain of trust or
security in exchange for subordination, the precariat is distinctive in class terms.
It also has a peculiar status position, in not mapping neatly onto high-status professional or middle-status craft occupations. (2011, 8)

Bait differs from much British class-conscious production in non-trivial ways. It isboth experimental in technique, non-linear in narrative, and aware of how the oldcertainties of class have stratified in the manner outlined by Standing. It is the ways
in which these formal categories of narrative and form explicate the dimension ofclass that I wish to build on, though firstly I shall explore the ways in which precarity makes itself known throughout Bait in order to demonstrate how experimental
technique and narrative form serve as both poetic and critique of this precarity.

Precarity and the Pastoral
Precarity in Bait takes multiple forms. Protagonist Martin is the avatar of a declining trade, the general collapsed into the individual: he does not have enoughwork beyond subsistence and does not know what tomorrow will bring. Attempts
to save for a boat to restore the scale of his labour to a sustaining degree areroutinely dashed by happenstance. Standing may disagree with this essay’s conception of Martin’s position as a precarious one, suggesting that “it is not right244Daniel Brookes

to equate the precariat with the working poor or with just insecure employment[…] [T]he precariousness also implies a lack of a secure work-based identity,
whereas workers in some low-income jobs may be building a career” (ibid., 9).
Martin’s work-based identity is clear to the viewer and non-seasonal village residents, but it is clearly disappearing and disrespected within a seasonal community (“you’re a fisherman? Then where’s your boat?” says rentier Tim to Martin)that includes different class relationships that historically would have been moreclosely bonded (pub landlord and community member) before the incursions ofneoliberal economics. Martin also closely corresponds with Standing’s suggestionthat the absence of subordination can be bought by job security, with Martin’s
apprentice and nephew Neil arguably positioned even further down the ladder,lacking the memory of the village as social formation around fisheries that shape(male) labour identity. As viewers we hear freighted discussions of post-Brexit
disputes between Britain and the European Union emerging from diegetic radios,giving political reality to these suggestions drawn in character building.
In a 2022 paper given on the relationship between Bait and class aesthetics,
Andrew Jarvis states that attachment to specific political issues is not what is atstake inasmuch as the film comprises “a hauntological neorealism that unsettles
any reference to a punctual political issue, Brexit or otherwise, and instead mediates the sensation of historical crisis.” Jarvis, in his examination of Jenkin’s use ofaudio/visual disjuncture, echoes Mark Fisher to underscore a persuasive broader
point about the film revealing capitalist realism as political decision. Non-realist
aesthetics make such modal readings workable and account for the film’s liminaland spectral presences in a satisfying manner. Nonetheless, the intertwining ofseveral ungeneralised aspects of life contemporary to late-2010s rural touristafflicted Britain prevents Bait from serving as a general model for, for example,
post-industrial northern England or the Scottish central belt or indeed westernlate-stage capitalism writ large.
Nor would these latter regions be well served by the pastoral. The pastoral, even when the social order introduced is rigorous in its mimesis, operates
through a closed system of distilled mythic conventions that resists attempts totranspose itself onto other situations. Bait may or may not, depending on yourview, meet the strictest historical literary view on the pastoral when considering Leo Marx’s “no shepherds, no pastoral” (1986, 8) edict. Terry Gifford’s viewson what constitutes the pastoral are more accommodating; themes of return,the function of idyll, and the exaltation of the rural as “providing an implicit
or explicit contrast to the urban” (2020, 2) are apparent in Bait, though their
execution may be rendered as anti-pastoral because of the way in which Jenkin“attacks the very idealising role inherent in poetry about the English countryside” (in Westling 2014, 22). William Empson’s mobilisation of notions of class“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”245

in the pastoral, whilst not Marxist in conclusion, acknowledge the relationshipbetween an overtly politicised ‘proletarian art’ (which he deems “covert pastoral”(1974, 6)) and the focalisation of social address from below which inheres in
the pastoral mode. Colin Burrow, whilst worrying about the lack of animals inmany of the texts Empson considered pastoral, felt that this structural view ofthe pastoral had some merit, suggesting that “literary representation necessarily
includes a range of entities beyond the particular, and top-down and bottom-up
views of the world are structurally as well as generically distinct” (2021, 8).
It is this ‘from below’ but not necessarily Marxist perspective that may offer
more nuance in considering Standing’s conception of new social classes and how
we might observe connections that operate intersectionally. The social spherein Bait is populated with instantiations of precarity beyond Martin. Neighbour
Wenna is reliant on seasonal labour owing to the village pub’s closure in the winter months, which she loses. Meanwhile, nephew Neil chooses between forms
of precarity, opting to apprentice in the local fishing industry rather than workseasonally on his father’s pleasure cruiser. Standing suggests that some membersof the precariat have found a “liberating side” (2011, vii) to this economic arrangement and, indeed, not all precariously employed people in Bait enter into
precarity as a form of social victimhood. The character of the taxi driver, whosesole scene relays in analepsis his previous employment as a fisherman, can survive in precarity owing to his ability to exploit infrastructural and social gaps.
His introduction in the narrative comes when he returns Wenna in his taxi fromthe nearest police station at a cost of £100. In a county whose median wage isapproximately £600 per week, with low rail availability and continued bus cuts,
precarity equates to entrepreneurial spirit.
Jenkin’s inclusion of this character speaks to the ongoing difficulty of traditional
solidarity in this new socio-economic arrangement. Bait shows several examples of‘looking sideways,’ from peer-to-peer, in order to highlight the ongoing separationin labour conditions and how they inscribe emotional states of separateness which
increase as the generations become younger. Through ghostly visions of village elders, Martin’s generation and the teenagers, Bait offers a vision of Cornish village
life that has clearly modified in three successive generations, with a constant setof values or feelings shared by all hard to pin down. In its developed form, in The
Long Revolution, “structure of feeling” (Williams 1992, 48) counters and extends
the Gramscian conception of hegemony by suggesting that, alongside the dominantthought forms and cultural practices that exist within a place and people, there mustalso be room for new feelings, thoughts, practices and ways of life that accounts forthe eventual accretion of social change. On these changes, Williams writes “onegeneration may train its successor […] but the new generation will have its own
structure of feeling, which will not appear to have come ‘from’ anywhere” (ibid., 49).

246Daniel Brookes

Jenkin suggests that the first half of Williams’ ideas here holds fast, but considers it in order to identify exactly the particular epoch of British capitalism,with its spirit of encouragement toward Big Tech-powered speculative investors
and property developers, that accounts for this change. For Jenkin, conceptionsof community dynamics in this Williamsian mode, idealised and naturalised
through the juxtaposition of village elders, adults and youths in a harmonious
and symbiotic relationship, have become rather a quaint and outdated notion.
Structures of feeling are imported from elsewhere and, in this case a nebulous
idea of the city-dweller’s values, take precedence over resident structures anddebates. Furthermore, Jenkin highlights the ways in which lessons descended
through generations have become distorted and misunderstood in this new paradigm. The presence of tourists in Cornwall, as acknowledged by Bait, is not a
new phenomenon. Among the traditional residents of the village, particularly
the older and ghostlier presences, the phrase ‘fleece them for all them’s worth’is deployed in a way that defines the historical and present attitude toward thetourist visitors and acts as shibboleth between residents. However, there are scantor no examples of ‘fleecing,’ of exploitation without recrimination, performed in
Bait by its residents to the tourists. The lesson, learned less as serious parable andmore as performance of self-identity, has begun to inform interactions between
the different forms of lower class.
Framing Bait as pastoral allows us to critique ways in which the shared feelingof an unnameable change across disparate characters inhabiting approximately
the same social status, particular to an idealised rural scene, is presented in text
and/or film. Terry Eagleton suggests that the pastoral entails a complex arrangement in which “the rich are poorer as well as richer than the common people, andthat even the intellectual […] shares a common humanity with others, which ultimately overrides whatever demarcates him or her from them” (1985, 160). Bait,along with several British works that have suggested an authentic sharedness
and vitality to working-class culture that is either sniffed at or appropriated by awealthier bourgeoisie, presents this arrangement in a broken state that is partially
repaired by the film’s conclusion. The ongoing separateness between dramatic
content and descriptions of its display in film means that there must also be an
accounting of other dimensions which shape and complicate interpretation.

Sounds / Aesthetics
Within the chapters of Some Versions of Pastoral, Empson chiefly bases his thesison the poetry and the novel prior to the twentieth century. However, there is one
remarkable aside that references cinema:

“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”247
The Englishman who seems to me nearest to a proletarian artist (of those I know
anything about) is Grierson the film producer; Drifters gave very vividly the feeling of actually living on a herring trawler and (by the beauty of shapes and waterand net and fish, and subtleties of timing and so forth) what I should call a pastoral feeling about the dignity of that form of labour. (1974, 8)

John Grierson’s nationality aside (he was Scottish), Empson’s recounting of one of
Bait’s topical and aesthetic forebears articulates a complex positionality within thegenre. For Empson, the pastoral is typically employed as a narratological method
which focalises social address from the lower parts of its hierarchy in order totease out alternative senses from textual ambiguities. In this section Empson begins to suggest that a “pastoral feeling” can be evoked by visual but non-narrativemeans; that an associative flow of images in montage can build a sense-world thatconnects questions of work and rural environment to suggest abstract subjective states such as ‘dignity,’ which Empson renders elsewhere as “a sense of glory”(ibid., 282) that may render this interpretation as a veiled piece of theology.
At a secular and material level, the visual references to Drifters in Bait arethose which both requisition from history an ongoing connection between practice and place; that is to say that Jenkin suggests Bait is of the same world as
Drifters, save for the modification of the base–superstructure relationship in theintervening ninety years. Nonetheless, there is a metaphysical aspect to Bait, an‘inner layer’ or embedded romanticism which attempts to communicate this‘dignity’ or ‘glory,’ or at least how it faces an uncertain future. Jenkin’s references
to Drifters imbue Grierson’s pro-filmic actuality with spectral presences impliedby film grain, texture, noise, leakage, damage and flickering light levels. Handdeveloped, unevenly exposed, and prone to occasionally scratching the acetate,
Jenkin is suggested to have “embraced these artefacts in the visual aesthetic of
the film” (British Cinematographer, n.d.), resulting in a restless visual field evenin the most static of shots.
My contention is that, by foregrounding method and the artefact not as unwanted but as the presence of the human, Jenkin forges several interesting connections between film and exterior discourses. Firstly, Jenkin connects the external and necessarily physical aspects of people and place with the shared internal
dimension that accounts for the dominant ‘structure of feeling’ that presides
within it. Secondly, Jenkin connects the actions of these smaller-scale precariat fishermen with his own physical and fragile artistic practice. Two indicative
minutes of montage (Jenkin 2019, 17:49) speak to this. Martin and Neil crouchon a stony beach framed against the tide, cutting caught fish from a net. The
longer shots of the sequence show Neil working patiently to loosen a fish, withthe ending of this sequence being a wordless smile exchanged between uncle and248Daniel Brookes

nephew as the trade continues through the bloodline. The connection between
tactility and the production of useful material, and between physical labour andthe maintenance of dignity and connectivity, is established.
In the montage at the beginning of the film (Jenkin 2019, 3:38) which announces the arrival of seasonal homeowners and holidaymakers, there is a cutting
between two separate spaces: Martin is ritualistically preparing a net to fish whilst
the Leighs and their fellow seasonal homeowners exit their bulky cars and complain about the length of the drive before entering their parodically ‘nautical’ homespaces. The visual clash established in this sequence mobilises several binaries that
operate throughout the film: between work and leisure, between poor and rich,between rural and city, and between extractive and derivative labour. Martin isseen with nets, fraying ropes, and digging stony sand to prepare his work, emphasising the texture and connection with objects—whilst Sandra is later seen putting
the accoutrements of the globalised middle-class home about the Leigh family’s
holiday let—prosecco, fresh yogurt—to prepare their work of selling a lifestyle.
What is interesting to note here is not just a visual clash but a sonic clash that
operates with a psychological and intertextual component that diverges fromthe use of objects as signifiers. The images that correspond with shots of Martin
working are freighted with machinic noises, bird cries, scrapes and involuntary
bodily sounds. The images that correspond with the families arriving are eerily
silent and frictionless; they perhaps recall the final triumph of the title charactersin The Birds, where invaders triumph by numbers, impervious to reason or previous ‘ways.’ This sonic contrast is not an act of happenstance. Jenkin, who alsoedited the film, shot the film silently and dubbed on all dialogue and ‘diegetic’and ‘non-diegetic’ sound. These sounds remind us that the social arrangementin this place prior to the invasion of the gentrifiers was tactile, frictional andman-made, and is being replaced by one of internet purchases, modernisations
and convenience, characterised by a shared delusion of the rural way of life as organic. The abruptness and foregrounded nature of Jenkin’s contrasts underscores
the impact that the rapid onset of precarity in the face of rentier capitalism has
had within the lifetime of Martin and his generation.
Bait contains a number of ironic visual signs based within local material practices that remind the viewer of a long history of place and economics. Someare flagged up for the viewer to join in the mockery, such as the Leigh family’s insertion of a porthole as part of the modernisation of their home. Other
such signs do not immediately call attention to themselves: for instance, Martin
stores the money for the boat he hopes to buy in a tin while his brother clears
up discarded drinks ‘tins’ from the shell of a former fishing boat. These smalland subtle reminders of Cornwall’s other major and dying industry, and how its
ghostly remnants appear to linger in a mocking and form, stud the mise-en-scène

“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”249

of Bait. What makes Bait particularly interesting in this regard is that Jenkin’s
protectionist critiques lie not just within the dramatic content but filter throughthe striking effects created by artisanal techniques and the consequences of analeatory approach to handling celluloid. The scratches and flickers render important objects such as fish incredibly present, the image demanding extra levels of
attention to itself as material. And yet, the objects become spectral as the focus,
blur and artefacts partially obscure and prevent clarity. What life has defamiliarised for Martin, Jenkin’s techniques defamiliarise for the viewer.

Double Plotting and Intersectionality
The clearest view of the convergence of aesthetic, narrative form and a new understanding of social class as a means of outlining a ‘new poetics’ of precarity
in Bait is afforded in three distinct moments. These three sections foregroundmontage in such a method so forceful as to deliberately reveal the ‘double plot’operating as a system of narrative contrasts. Of double plots as a narrative strategy, Empson writes that “the interaction of the two plots gives a particularly clear
setting for, or machine for imposing, the social and metaphysical ideas on which
pastoral depends” (1974, 30).
This plot interaction is clear throughout Bait. What Martin, as symbol of theresident community, endures is mirrored and refracted across the range of his
tourist counterparts. Sometimes this is detailed as comedic inversion (the scenethat immediately follows Martin and Neil hauling in their net is tourist son Hugo
preparing to snorkel with a harpoon in a dilettantish fashion) and sometimes
this device operates with a note of tragic irony.
Empson’s descriptor ‘machine for imposing,’ quite without foresight, is a good
description of the intensified cinematic method by which Jenkin makes thisdouble plot apparent through montage. In a sequence (Jenkin 2019, 33:58) thatcombines two separate places in a unified montage sequence, utterances fromparallel conversations that turn into arguments from separate rooms of the village pub are joined together as if they were all part of one conversation. The twoconversations are on the topic of a new generation of wealth changing the established conventions of village life; the teenagers argue about pool table etiquette
while Martin and the landlady argue about the pub’s closure in winter. The shot
lengths in the scene gradually reduce as the tensions in the disparate conversations rise, accelerating the tempo. In each conversation, financial rationale isgiven for the change in procedure, but it is the experimental and comical montage that highlights their connections. Though this scene broadly continues thetheme of separation between villagers and visitors, and the precariat and the250Daniel Brookes

secure, it is apparent that this scene is also at the heart of Jenkin’s appraisal of
new class intersectionality by creating an energetic set piece out of their fusion.
In establishing thematic connection in such a determined method, Jenkinsuggests how ideas that seemed more straightforward under a Marxist conception of class, in this case solidarity and class consciousness, may have become
more complicated and diffuse in the social reality Standing describes. The twoconversations taking place divide themselves on generational lines; middle-aged
workers talking to each other and younger people talking to each other. Jenkin’s
creative montage reveals an all-encompassing dynamic of powerlessness of precarity that has no respect for distinctions previously given to gender, professional
experience and age. Martin and Wenna, representing the underemployed andunemployed respectively, are powerless in their conversations with the landlady and the tourists precisely because they cannot assert the supremacy of theirneeds or factors of tradition over economic reason and the whip-hand of bourgeois domination of the public sphere. The experimental use of montage binds
together for the viewer what appears to have been understood extra-textually by
the characters inhabiting this social position. I would like to call this an example
of a ‘precariat consciousness,’ a visual representation of the intersectional understanding that asserts itself between cultural similars, in this case those within theeconomic struggle recognising those who are set to inherit the same problems.
Raymond Williams argues that, in the reconstitution of what comprises social
class as positions within economies change, this recognition is increasingly unlikely
given that “traditional definitions have broken down, and that the resulting confusion is a serious diminution of consciousness” (1992, 325). This ability to perceiveclass-based needs in Bait only appears to be a skill possessed by other people whoshare in these specific needs of certainty and self-identity. Martin gives over one of
his freshly caught fish to his unnamed elderly neighbour every day, which, given
the scale of his operations, amounts to a significant proportion. Jenkin inserts no
subtext that positions Martin and Wenna romantically or even as surrogate or alternative family; their sympathies extend beyond their skillsets and traumas andemerge as the real examples of solidarity within the film. The other example is therelationship between Martin and Neil, which represents a narratological attempt
to indicate the futility of proletarian labour bonds as a point of resistance against
forces which attempt to diminish them. In Bait, and in the fisheries of Cornwall
and Wales, the traditional working class as locus of solidarity and labour identity is
not present. Rather, Jenkin presents master and apprentice as the rural equivalentof Deliveroo cyclists huddling outside of a city-centre McDonalds.
Jenkin’s intensified thematic paralleling through montage returns twice more.
The next iteration switches between scenes of cookery (Jenkin 2019, 56:28) in a
triple contrast. Sandra and Tim prepare and eat the lobster stolen by their son

“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”251

Hugo from Martin’s lobster pot, while Hugo eats lobster on the beach with his
teenage tourist friends. These actions are determinedly contrasted with Neilmaking a cheap meal of pasta and sauce. The montage binds together the authentic, fresh, local and expensive produce given over to gentrifiers while thelocals eat meals from a different part of the chain of globalisation.
The worried expression worn by Sandra during this montage appears to communicate an emerging recognition of and guilt about her role in the changing
face of the village. Bait suggests that the only successful weapon that the precariat have, especially after Wenna’s physical violence toward Tim Leigh fails, inprovoking the Leigh family is to arouse a dormant guilt within Sandra, the Leighfamily mother. Sandra is frequently framed in shots and montage sequences withvarious signs indicative of success—the car, the prosecco, the modernised home,
the Apple laptop which we see her moving invisible money about with—and
frequently espouses rhetoric with a finance-focused politics. However, Sandra isalso painted as a modern liberal: allowing her daughter to stop out all night witha rueful grin, siding with the villagers as their tenant complains about the noise,and engaging with Britain’s own liberal discourse on the radio.
This incremental guilt, seeded throughout the narrative, feeds into the final
intensified double plot section that brings Bait to coda (Jenkin 2019, 1:04:09).
Sandra visits Martin’s home when he is away and, after examining the sparse interior space of the home, puts money in his boat tin to assuage her guilt. As Empson remarks, “the ‘bourgeois’ themselves do not like literature to have too much‘bourgeois ideology’” (1974, 5). The accumulated value of these class-attachedsigns is realised by Sandra to have a latent political dimension that affects questions of place. Indeed, it is in the very montage that pairs the Leighs eating lobster miserably as Neil happily eats a terrible-looking pasta dish that this becomes
fatefully apparent. The cloistering of ‘too much’ bourgeois ideology and the accumulation of loaded signs have revealed to Sandra a schism that outlines her own
predatory position in local economics. The contradictions of her position in new
economic realities become impossible to adequately resolve, hence Sandra’s guilt.
But this attempt at restitution is only the one part of the film’s closure of its
double plot. The subplot, adjoined by more traditional means in the montage,shows a final confrontation between Neil, who has been sleeping with Katie,
the daughter of the Leigh family, and the Leigh family son, Hugo (Jenkin 2019,
1:11:08). Hugo baits Neil and Katie out of the fishing hut by audibly dragging
Martin’s lobster pots, again indicating tourist entitlement. After a quarrel, Neil,tracked by Katie, walks toward Hugo and is stopped by Hugo’s hand around his
throat. Neil attempts to throw a punch but Katie, in attempting to prevent thepunch, teams with Hugo to push Neil from the quayside to his death in his father’s boat.

252Daniel Brookes

The mirroring of the two plots reminds the viewer that reverse ‘exploitation’by the precarious of the settled, and that the mantra of ‘fleecing them for all
them’s worth,’ is simply not possible. There may, with upwardly applied pressure and internalised guilt, be a simple form of financial restitution that sees thehigher orders (Sandra) giving the lower caste (Martin) what they are owed allalong. But parity also comes with a price, in this case blood. The death of Neil,which in Jenkin’s edit has been foreshadowed from the commencement of thefilm, is both an actual and a symbolic one: the actual death is the focus on blood
dripping from his temple like the life that is draining from these places. Liberal
guilt, restitution and philanthropy can mend the small fissures, but the positionof precarity for Jenkin is synonymous with death: by hunger, by danger, by being
trapped and by being unable to move forward.
The symbolic death returns us, finally, to Empson and the pastoral. In death,
Neil is both at one with the environment and its new martyr. In his analysis ofAndrew Marvell’s The Garden, Empson notes the pastoralist fantasy of wishing
to be chained by brambles and nailed by thorns as one in which the narrator “becomes Christ” (1974, 123). Here, Jenkin, framing the narrative with the image of
Neil’s face in the moment of the realisation of his death, imputes the Christ-mythinto Neil, which, in the coda which sees Martin return to sea, appears to haverestored the moral conditions that allows for the idealised social order to exist.

Conclusion
The coda to Bait presents going backward—reverting the pleasure cruiser backto its former state as a fishing vessel, with the remaining precariat returning tosea as a unified proletarian force—as a way forward. For Martin and Steven,coached in the ways of the sea and bound by the memory of a class-consciousness before neoliberalism, this has emotional realism as it represents the repairof their personal separation. It would be remiss to ignore the occasional strategies such as these in Bait which lapse into sentimentalism and protectionism as
a double measure. Standing writes of “the nostalgics,” those forlorn proletarian
workers who are “angry and bitter” at inequality but are drawn to “populist neofascism” (2011, 156), and find themselves looking into the past for a politicalprogramme that addresses the now.
For Wenna, who makes up the third member of the crew, the film’s closure
appears incongruous. Standing writes that the youth that make up the largest
section of the precariat do “not look back fondly to the labourist employment
security of the pre-globalisation era” (ibid.). A promise of solidarity that emerges
from a brief triumph of the ‘precariat consciousness’ appears to have gripped

“The View Is Nice, but You Can’t Eat It”253

Wenna, whose expression is ambiguous as she goes out to sea. The latter half of2022 and early part of 2023 has seen increasing industrial action taken across the
traditionally employed parts of the sector (salariat, proletariat) but organisation
between various precarities has been poor until now: what role does locality playin precariat solidarity, and does Jenkin imbue Cornwall or the rural honeypots
with a mythic quality of their own that allows a fantasy of solidarity that obviates
gender and generational belonging to flourish?
Though the pastoral allows the critic to approach the structurally and generically distinct aspects of class-focused examinations of the particularities of place,a further Empsonian reading of Bait would need to account in a more sustained
fashion for the mythic quality contained therein, and for the extent to which it
affects the text. I have conveniently ignored, save for the occasional mention, astratum of older villagers—an elderly neighbour, the ghost of Martin’s father—
who appear to wink knowingly whenever trouble is afoot as if to give faith in theold ways. A further excavation of Bait must account for their inclusion.
In his combination of experimental aesthetics and narrative flow, Jenkin has
explored heretofore unexplained emotional tonalities of precariat experience.
The shot-to-shot connective transitions of Bait chime against established conventions of ‘truthful’ capture in British depictions of precarious labour and poverty. Even if we narrow our focus to the 2010s and works such as The Selfish Giant(2013) and I, Daniel Blake (2016), Bait does not share the aforementioned works’
anti-poetic style and discourse of sobriety. Bait contains sequences which refuse
smooth narrative transition that neatly organises time and connects space. In
spite of these transitions and disruptions that evoke art cinema’s essential “ambiguity” (Bordwell 1979, 60), Bait is not a work that attempts to transmit the forcesof alienation by the creation of viewer alienation within narrative or character
construction. Rather, the presence of this ambiguity appears to be the ongoing
unfolding of uncertainties and the demands that this places on both the material
and the metaphysical.

References
Beacham, Peter, and Niklaus Pevsner. 2014. The Buildings of England: Cornwall. New Haven, London: Yale University Press.
Bordwell, David. 1979. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Film Criticism 4,
no. 1 (Fall): 56–64.
British Cinematographer. n.d. “Hooked! Mark Jenkin / Bait.” British Cinematographer.
Accessed 9 April 2023. https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/mark-jenkin-bait/.

254Daniel Brookes
Burrow, Colin. 2021. “The Terrifying Vroom.” London Review of Books 43, no. 14 (July):
7–10.
Cornwall Council. 2019. “Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019.” Together Network. Accessed 9 April 2023. https://togethernetwork.org.uk/uploads/shared/IMD.-2019.Cornwall.pdf.
Eagleton, Terry. 1986. “The Critic as Clown.” In Terry Eagleton, Against the Grain: Essays
1975–1985. London: Verso.
Empson, William. 1974. Some Versions of Pastoral. New York: New Directions.
Gifford, Terry. 2014. “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral.” In The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment, edited by Louise Westling, 17–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gifford, Terry. 2020. Pastoral: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge.
Grierson, John, director. 1929. Drifters. New Era Films / Empire Marketing Board. 49
min. DVD.
Jarvis, Andrew. 2022. “The violence of finance in Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019).” Paper presented at Class and Contemporary UK Film and Television, online, 7 July 2022.
Jenkin, Mark, director. 2019. Bait. Early Day Films / BFI. 1 hr., 29 min. DVD.
Lefebrve, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith.
New York: Blackwell.
Lefebrve, Henri. 2002. “Work and Leisure in Everyday Life.” In The Everyday Life Reader,edited by Ben Highmore, 225–236. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Marx, Leo. 1986. “Pastoralism in America.” In Ideology and Classic American Literature,edited by Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, 36–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London, New York:
Bloomsbury Academic.
Standing, Guy. 2016. “The Five Lies Of Rentier Capitalism.” Social Europe, 27 October 2016. Accessed 9 April 2023. https://www.socialeurope.eu/five-lies-rentier-capitalism.
Williams, Malcolm and Phoebe Lawlor. 2022. “Local Housing Affordability in Cornwall.”
University of Exeter. Accessed 9 April 2023. https://www.cornwallalc.org.uk/uploads/
uoe-housing-affordability-report.pdf?v=1669736952.
Williams, Raymond. 1977. “A Lecture on Realism.” Screen 18, no. 1: 61–74.
Williams, Raymond. 1992. The Long Revolution. Chatham: Hogarth Press.

PART 5

CLASS BEYOND
THE HUMAN:
WORK EXPERIENCESAND
THE ANTHROPOCENE

5.1
Bare Land
Alienation as Deracination in
Anna Tsing and John Steinbeck
Tim Christiaens

Certainly, man thrives best (or has at least) in a state of semianarchy. Then hehas been strong, inventive, reliant, moving. But cage him with rules, feed him
and make him healthy and I think he will die as surely as a caged wolf dies.
I should not be surprised to see a cared for, thought for, planned nation disintegrate, while a ragged, hungry, lustful nation survived.
—John Steinbeck (1975, 221)

Towards an Ecological Class Politics
In the Anthropocene, life on Earth is increasingly precarious. With every new
heatwave, cataclysmic storm or viral pandemic, we slowly realise that we are living on a damaged planet. According to Bruno Latour, this predicament redraws
the foundations of class conflict (2018, 61). Marx focused on the conflict between capital and labour over who owned the means of production, but today’s
ecological conflict pits those who control the means of reproduction against those
who have to fend for themselves in increasingly hostile environments. The richcan reproduce their socio-cultural conditions of existence by hiding away in gated communities, while the poor are stuck on degraded soil. Some own the means
to recreate the environmental background conditions for their way of life, whileothers do not. Marx would abhor such a loose utilisation of the vocabulary ofclass, but Latour convincingly argues that politics in the Anthropocene revolves
around the reproduction of life rather than merely the relations of production.
Marx distinguished modes of production from their conditions of reproduction, but this becomes untenable once the economy directly affects its own background conditions (Fraser 2022).1 When economic expansion is actively cutting
the branch it is sitting on, class analysis must pay attention to the environmental

258Tim Christiaens

conditions of possibility of life on Earth. At that stage, “it is a matter of broadening the definitions of class by pursuing an exhaustive search for everything thatmakes subsistence possible” (Latour 2018, 96).
In the context of unsustainable modernisation, the ecological class is the collective whose livelihood is at risk. They suffer the collateral damage of infinite economic expansion and the reproduction of their ways of being alive is rendered disposable in the name of continued economic growth (ibid., 53). But unsustainable
capitalist expansion also harms non-human life. As Baptiste Morizot argues, “thehuman way of being alive only makes sense if it is entangled in thousands of otherways of being alive conducted by the animals, plants, bacteria, and ecosystems
around us” (2020, 35–36, own translation). The ecological class hence consists of
all living beings deprived of the means of reproduction. With a nod to Giorgio
Agamben, I propose to call this human and non-human subject of ecological classpolitics ‘bare land.’ Agamben claims that specifically human life reproduces itself
not only biologically as ‘natural life’ (zōē), but also culturally as ‘socio-politicallife’ (bios) (Agamben 1998, 9). However, human beings deprived of the means forreproducing a life worthy of being lived do not simply return to natural life. They
become ‘bare life’ (nuda vita), a kind of zero degree of socio-political life. They are
human and still appear as human bios, yet their subjectivity is bereft of all qualities
that make them human. They are torn from community relations and their lifeworld until nothing remains but empty shells of human life. Agamben’s examples
are inmates of concentration camps treated so violently they turn mute or refugees
forcefully impeded from creating a new life in their country of residence. Bare life
is a life unable to form long-term relations with any type of human community. It
is a mere isolated individual detached from a nurturing collective.
Climate refugees, deprived of the means of subsistence amidst environmental
collapse, constitute bare life in Agamben’s classical sense of the term. But theunravelling of the biosphere extends beyond the destitution of human life; it affects the non-human web of life as well.2 Hence why I suggest using the term
‘bare land’ to describe the denudement of relations among both human and nonhuman beings. Unsustainable capitalist expansion undermines the livelihoods ofentire ecosystems until nothing but barren wasteland is left. Afterwards, there
is no other option but to abandon these dead lands (Sassen 2014, 149). Just like
Agamben’s bare life refers to human subjects stripped of the means to reproduce
meaningful lives, bare land is a collective subject consisting of human and nonhuman living beings who have lost the relational capacity to form meaningful
ecosystems. Bare land denotes an ecosystem reduced to its zero degree. Nothingremains but lifeless dust. It is ‘collateral damage’ (Agamben 2011, 119–120), thewaste economic expansion generates to reproduce the bios of the more fortunateclasses (Nixon 2013; Lessenich 2019).

Bare L and259

In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explains how bare land is formed. Capitalism produces ‘ruins’ by stripping living beings of the capacity to form their own
ecological relations, a necessary condition for the reproduction of life. Contemporary capitalism alienates living beings from ecological relations, i.e. capitalism
generates “the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not
matter. Through alienation, people and things become mobile assets; they canbe removed from their lifeworlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged
with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere” (Tsing 2021, 5). Cutting thethreads of the web of life through capitalist alienation, however, produces bareland as a side effect, infertile waste deprived of the means to reproduce itself
without capitalist support. Alienation is the deracination of living beings fromtheir lifeworld, transforming them into passive cogs for capitalist accumulation.
However, Tsing upholds matsutake mushrooms, rare fungi popular among Japanese foodies, as exemplars of the resilience of ecological relations. Even amidst
ruins, matsutakes successfully form beneficial relations with other living beings, like pine trees, other fungi and human beings. The insistent capacity toregenerate ecological relations is the ineluctable means of reproduction for thematsutake mushroom. Even at the end of the world, the matsutake persists byperpetually co-producing new lifeworlds for itself and fellow living beings (seealso Haraway 2016).
I claim that Tsing’s approach to capitalist alienation is descriptively convincing but lacks the affective force for ecological class consciousness. Tsing surveys
the web of life from the perspective of living beings quite distant from humankind, articulating a theoretical diagnosis rather than a political exhortation. On
an affective level, it is challenging to generate ecological class consciousness
among the (presumably) human readers of my chapter if they are presented with
only the biographies of mushrooms growing far beyond my home. As Chantal
Mouffe (2018, 72) argues, the construction of an emphatically political identity
requires an appeal to the affects, like hope, indignation or compassion. Latour
and Schultz also stress that ecological politics currently suffers from an affective
misalignment, with people failing to identify with the fate of their increasingly
inhospitable environments (2022, 47). Why would European humans care about
these unknown fungi? The reproduction of our CO2-intensive livelihoods largely
depends on the emission of bare land elsewhere, so in the short run, we standto benefit more from putting our heads in the sand. I employ Chakrabarty’s(2021) suggestion of grounding post-humanist politics first in strategic anthropocentrism to subsequently push for a post-humanist expansion of our humanunderstanding. One must first feel personally interpellated by the crisis of the
global means of reproduction before one can grasp the need for an ecological260Tim Christiaens

class politics beyond human confines. I turn to John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The
Grapes of Wrath as a kindred spirit with more mobilising potential. Steinbecktells the story of a family of impoverished farmers from Oklahoma, the Joads,
travelling to California in pursuit of a better life, yet only encountering morepoverty, exploitation and anti-immigrant racism. Steinbeck describes in detailthe environmental and social devastation, but he focuses on the commodified
labour power of migrant farmers rather than commodified mushrooms. Steinbeck’s main characters are also uprooted from their entangled histories in theland and community of rural Oklahoma, but they present a more familiar faceof the ecological class deprived of the means of reproduction. Steinbeck’s outcry
against alienation-as-deracination is clear, but the shift in perspective facilitates
the empathetic outrage required for building ecological class consciousness.
Steinbeck’s strategic anthropocentrism helps human readers understand whyalienation-as-deracination is a concern.

Alienation-as-Deracination
Tsing’s alienation diagnosis should be firmly distinguished from more traditional theories of alienation. The latter usually presuppose some metaphysicallyanchored essential nature that living beings are supposed to enact. Capitalism
then ‘alienates’ beings by perverting these attempts to actualise their nature. The
young Marx, for instance, posits a human species-being (Gattungswesen), fromwhich workers are subsequently alienated under industrial capitalism (Marx2005). Factory conditions are unnatural, according to Marx, because they hinder people from actualising their human nature. But as a post-humanist, Tsing
rejects essentialist narratives about human nature. Post-humanism suspects thediscourse of human nature to be an oppressive apparatus that normalises human beings that fail to conform to pre-established ‘humanity’ (Braidotti 2013,
26–27). ‘Natures’ in the plural, on the other hand, have no pre-established metaphysical essences but are the products of collaborative interweavings between
multiple living beings. According to Donna Haraway, “critters—human andnot—become-with each other, compose and decompose each other, in every
scale and register of time and stuff in sympoietic tangling, in ecological evolutionary developmental earthly worlding and unwordling” (2016, 97). In otherwords, living beings’ natures are not metaphysical givens awaiting actualisation,
but the contingent outcome of interactions with other living beings. Existence
is an open-ended and non-teleological process of constructing, deconstructing
and reconstructing one’s nature in collaboration with others. That is why mostpost-humanists either reject the terminology of alienation or even embrace it asBare L and261

a positive ideal for constructing cyborg futures without an inherent teleology(Braidotti 2013, 88; see also Haraway 1998; Laboria Cuboniks 2018).
Tsing’s choice of ‘alienation’ to formulate her critical theory of capitalism ishence curious. Rather than basing her critique on natural essentialism, she takesa relational perspective on alienation (Haraway 2016, 37).
I find myself surrounded by patchiness, that is, a mosaic of open-ended assemblages of entangled ways of life, with each further opening into a mosaic of temporal rhythms and spatial arcs. I argue that only an appreciation of current precarity as an earthwide condition allows us to notice this—the situation of ourworld. (Tsing 2021, 4)

Living beings are constitutively vulnerable and open to the impact of others. Ifthey possess the capacity to relationally affect other organisms, they also havethe correlative capacity to be affected by those relations. Instead of identifying
independent, autarkic entities with their own essential natures, Tsing proposesa relational ontology that embeds individual organisms in ever-changing living
networks. Living beings are always already entangled in heterogenous assemblages lacking a pre-determined teleology. For Tsing, “precarity is the conditionof being vulnerable to others. Unpredictable encounters transform us; we are notin control, even of ourselves. Unable to rely on a stable structure of community,
we are thrown into shifting assemblages, which remake us as well as our others”(ibid., 20). The matsutake is an excellent example of this ontology; not only is it
deeply intertwined with shifting forest ecosystems, but even its own individuality as a specimen is relative. What laymen observe with the naked eye as a single
matsutake, biologists have proven to consist of different DNA strains from multiple matsutake individuals (ibid., 237–238). Even a single matsutake is, in fact,
an assemblage of several individuals working together to increase their chancesof collective survival.
Tsing distinguishes these ecological relations characteristic of the web of life
from commodified relations of capitalist networks of exchange. Ecological relations derive from living beings’ own capacity to co-produce lifeworlds (ibid., 28).
By slowly affecting and being affected by each other, they learn to perceive eachother’s sensibilities and cooperatively co-engineer ecosystems in which they cancollectively thrive. This is a subtle back-and-forth calibration of multiple organisms that, over time, constitutes a smoothly operating web of living beings continually affecting and re-affecting each other.3 This is an almost imperceptibly
slow process taking place in supra-human deep time (Chakrabarty 2021, 190).
A rainforest, for example, does not emerge overnight, but slowly materialises,
across centuries, by fauna and flora immanently coordinating their conduct with

262Tim Christiaens

each other. Ultimately, a wilderness of living beings forms a relatively stable ecosystem without the need for top-down design or coordination. They have collectively established a network of horizontal relations that together produce a
vibrant and flexible ecosystem.
Opposed to such ecological relations are commodified relations of capitalist exchange. Among the different world-forming activities in the web of life,
one creature, ‘Modern Man,’ supports a peculiar form of ecosystem engineeringthat disavows the species’ own dependency on the web of life (Tsing 2021, 21).
It represents ‘Nature’ as a monolithic, passive and external background to its
own socio-economic expansion. ‘Nature’ appears as an available instrumental
resource for a supposedly independent human civilisation. Capitalism is one
such growth regime that exploits the fecundity of the web of life to further economic expansion (ibid., 5). To this purpose, capital has to subject living beings to
grand-scale efficient methods of production and exchange. Capitalism replaces
the slow horizontal entanglements of the web of life with the faster rhythm of
top-down coordinated capital accumulation. Singular ecological relations developed through mutual affectation across centuries are subjected to the uniform
laws of economic equivalence to speed up the circulation of beings (Moore 2015,
235). This means dissolving the direct ecological relations living beings form
among each other in favour of top-down managed relations of production andexchange, mediated by capital. The latter takes control over relations between
living beings to synchronise all elements of its supply chain and simplify theprocess of capital accumulation (Tsing 2021, 132; see also Morizot 2020, 31).
Tsing stays close to standard Marxist political economy, even if she uses posthumanist terminology. In Capital: Volume I, Marx describes how living labouris the force to affect and be affected by the world through labour, but capitalism forces workers to sell their living labour as interchangeable commodified
units of ‘labour power,’ which capital puts to work in a factory system in orderto accumulate surplus value. According to Marx, capital asserts its power overthe labour process by concentrating the power to coordinate the labour process
in the hands of managers and machinery.4 Artisanal craftsmen in pre-industrialised workshops were collectively and autonomously in control of their own
labour. They coordinated the labour process directly with each other, without
the mediation of a boss. Machine-operated factories and assembly-lines, on theother hand, dispossess workers of the power to form horizontal relations of cooperation. Workers still have to collaborate to produce valuable commodities,
but this process is subsumed under managerial control. Capital sets the terms
for workers’ interactions. If assembly-line workers even wanted to take autonomous control of the labour process, they would no longer know how, as the moment of conception of the labour process has been thoroughly separated from

Bare L and263

its concrete execution. The knowledge required to run the factory system is entirely concentrated in the managerial echelon, on which workers have become
dependent. Factory labour expresses not the immanent vibrancy of living labourand social cooperation, but the commands of capital in pursuit of economic expansion. Individual workers are, in this process, only mere ‘living accessories,’
interchangeable cogs of a centrally planned machine (Marx 2005b, 693).
Tsing agrees with this analysis, but argues that the colonial plantation showcased the dispossession of living cooperation long before the industrial revolution (Tsing 2021, 38–39; see also Tsing 2011). The plantation destroys the backand-forth rhythm of the web of life typical of, for example, rainforests with asingle meticulously managed monoculture that scales up and accelerates the
productivity of the land. The living labour of beings forming ecological relations
is thereby instrumentalised in a system of top-down commands in service ofcapital accumulation. The coordination of crops development is concentrated in
the hands of capital. Through its mediation, plants are made to grow as fast andcost-efficiently as possible in order to maximise capital expansion. Living beings
are reduced to an abstract resource to be maximally exploited. Jason Moore sums
it up succinctly:
In capitalism, the crucial divide is not between Humanity and Nature—it is between capitalisation and the web of life. Capitalism’s arrogance is to assign value
to life-activity within the commodity-system (and an alienating value at that)while de-valuing, and simultaneously drawing its life-blood from, uncommodified life-activity within reach of capitalist power. (2015, 100)

Tsing locates alienation in the transition from the web of life to capitalist relationsof production and exchange.5 “In capitalist logics of commodification, things aretorn from their lifeworlds to become objects of exchange. This is the process I
am calling ‘alienation’” (Tsing 2021, 121). Alienation occurs when living beings
are subsumed under capitalist growth regimes as stand-alone abstract resources.
The moving force of life is then no longer the immanent interaction between
living beings, but the instrumental logic of capital aiming to accumulate itself.
Living beings are, as it were, mere vehicles for capital accumulation moved byan alien power (Marx 2005b, 693). Capitalist subsumption uproots living beings
from their ecological relations and refurbishes them as uniform commodities
mobile enough to be coordinated independently of the web of life that formed
them. The web of life is unwoven and turned into a collection of stand-alone
commodities that obey the laws of capital accumulation. For the matsutake, thisis a literal process of deracination: they are cut off by the roots and integrated
into global supply chains. For the companies investing in the matsutake trade,264Tim Christiaens

the mushrooms are simply a shape their capital takes on its trajectory toward
self-accumulation. By separating beings from their roots in the web of life, they
appear as something alien to themselves. Value is determined extraneously interms of beings’ instrumentality to capital accumulation; whatever is deemeduseless is discarded as waste.
In the long run, alienation-as-deracination produces a barren, unlively webof life. By dismantling ecological relations, it undercuts living beings’ means ofreproduction. Once living beings are dispossessed of the force to guarantee theirown thriving via ecological relations, they become dependent on capital reproducing them for profit. The crops grown in a monoculture field cannot survive
independently without the interference of capitalist management. If these living
beings stop being useful to capital, the latter emits them as bare land. By cutting
living beings loose from the webs that shape their nature, the long-term effect isa loss of overall vitality. The colonial plantation, for example, must destroy lush
rainforests in order to concentrate the management of plant growth in the handsof agricultural experts. The continued reproduction of life is henceforth conditional on its utility to capital expansion. The resulting monoculture can maximise
the productivity of profitable crops, but it undermines the land’s long-term resilience. Single-crop fields are dependent on the continued investments of capitalfor their survival (Moore 2015, 112). They are more vulnerable to environmental deprivation or infectious disease because they fail to ensure their reproduction through ecological relations. By concentrating the coordination of relations
among living beings under capitalist management, the crops become unable toflexibly react to outside influences. They have become too dependent on the coordinating, alien power of capital (Morizot 2020, 185). Just like Marx’s deskilled
factory workers become dependent on the coordinating power of capital, living
beings that have lost their potential to form ecological relations helplessly dependon the whims of capital to survive. Monoculture farming is subsequently facedwith a dilemma: either it must attempt to immunise plantations from external
contaminations from the web of life—by spraying pesticides, importing superfertilisers, genetically modifying the crops—or it must abandon unproductive
lands (Moore 2015, 270–286). Once the investment of keeping the impoverishedsoil no longer yields sufficient profits, capital expels these territories as bare land.

John Steinbeck and Ecological Class Politics
Post-humanist environmentalism provides illuminating insights on the ecological limits of capitalism, but a frequent complaint is that the elimination of clear
distinctions between humans and non-humans is politically ineffective.6 The

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addressees of any publication calling for an ecological class politics are strictly
human, yet they are expected to enact ecological class consciousness throughstories of the uprooting of rare mushrooms or faraway rainforests. Post-humanist environmentalism seems to require human individuals to transcend their anthropocentric identity in favour of an abstract extended self encompassing theentire biosphere. It is thereby confronted with an affective challenge: how does
one generate a deeply felt and resonant connection between the human addressees of one’s writings and a world too ancient, large and complex for the humanbrain to fathom? According to Chakrabarty, “we cannot place [the planet] in acommunicative relationship with humans. It does not as such address itself tohumans […] To encounter the planet in thought is to encounter something thatis the condition of human existence and yet remains profoundly indifferent tothat existence” (2021, 70). The environment at stake in ecological class politics
exceeds the bounds of human intelligibility, constituting a hyperobject that resists easy representation (Horn 2020, 166). Tsing attempts to focus the challenge
on a more manageable scale by zooming in on one entity, the matsutake mushroom, but even this simple being turns out to constitute a node in a bewilderingly complex network of relations.
More advisable is to assume anthropocentric strategic essentialism in conducting ecological class politics. Rather than trying to invoke compassion for
faraway beings of a radically different nature from ours, Chakrabarty advises
starting from a more familiar, human appeal. “Our creaturely life, collectively
considered, is our competitive animal life as a species, a life that, pace Kant, humans cannot ever altogether escape” (2021, 90). Hence,
any theory of politics adequate to the planetary crisis humans face today would
have to begin from the same old premise of securing human life but now ground itself
in a new philosophical anthropology, that is, in a new understanding of the changing place of humans in the web of life. (Chakrabarty 2021, 91, emphasis added)

Any effective response to the planetary crisis of today must start from an appeal to human beings’ need to reproduce their way of life. Once this strategically anthropocentric appeal clarifies the stakes of the crisis on a cognitive level
understandable for human beings, it can clarify why the political struggle forhuman reproduction necessitates an ontological shift of perspective in favour ofa post-humanist ontology of the web of life. The affront of alienation-as-deracination and the subsequent ejection of bare land also affect human life. Alienationis hence not only a problem for Japanese mushrooms, but also for the humanaddressees of this book chapter. Focusing on this human fall-out first gives amore solid affective foundation to subsequently extend the analysis to other liv-

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ing beings. Once we viscerally accept the diagnosis of alienation-as-deracination
for humans, it is easier to argue for its extension to the entire biosphere. John
Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath shows potential in this endeavour. It was
written in order to provoke outrage in Depression-era America for the uprootingof farmers and their lands under laissez-faire capitalism and it can still have thiseffect today (Seelye 2002, 30).
However, the politics of Steinbeck’s book do not explicitly align with the programme of ecological class politics. Steinbeck was primarily a New Deal reformist (Dickstein 2004, 124). He believed that a stronger welfare state should integrate impoverished farmer-migrants into a broad and dignified working class(Yazell 2017, 507). This programme had no explicit environmental angle andheld a strained relationship to Marxist class politics. Marxist critics generally
like Steinbeck’s social diagnosis, but they object to its reformist solutions (Beckand Erickson 1988, 44–57; Wang 2012, 1–31; Nez 2022, 97–84). Steinbeck’s presentation of how the Joads are forced out of Oklahoma aligns well with Marx’s
theory of primitive accumulation and the expulsion of surplus populations (seeMarx 1996, 503–545). According to Marx, British capitalism commenced whenlarge landholders forcefully privatised common farming lands and drove off thelocal farmers. The latter migrated to the cities and became the urban working
class. The Joads are the American equivalent of these proto-proletarian farmers.
Droughts and debts make tenancy subsistence farming financially unsustainable.
“A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. Yes, he cando that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank”(Steinbeck 1993, 39). When the pressure of debt rises, a few large-scale landowners buy up all the land and forcefully expel their tenants. The latter move to California in pursuit of a better life, where they become a proletarianised industrial
reserve army pushing wages down for other workers (McParland 2016, 84). The
solution, however, is for Steinbeck not revolution but state reform. He does notwish to upend capitalism itself, but only to embed it within better government
regulation. Marxist critics consequently accuse Steinbeck of containing rather
than reinforcing working-class fervour.
Another element deviating from Tsing’s ecological class politics is Steinbeck’s
Christian humanism (Dougherty 1962, 224–226). Steinbeck introduces one of
the central characters, ex-preacher Jim Casy, as a man who, even amidst a deep
crisis of faith, upholds Christianity via an appeal to love for the human neighbour: “Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? […] Maybe it’s all men andall women we love; maybe that’s the Holy sperit—the human sperit—the wholeshebang” (Steinbeck 1993, 29). Steinbeck’s explicit love for humankind, createdin the image of the Lord, animates the entire novel. His characters believe not ina post-human web of life but in an Emersonian humanistic Oversoul, a common

Bare L and267

immortal soul shared by all humanity, of which individual egos are only limited
participants (Beck and Erickson 2016, 199). The novel is steeped in Christian
metaphors and Biblical references. The title, for instance, refers not only to theabolitionist protest song Battle Hymn of the Republic (“Mine eyes have seen theglory of the coming of the Lord / He is trampling out the vintage where thegrapes of wrath are stored”), but also to Revelations 14:19 (“And the angel thrustin his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into thegreat winepress of the wrath of God.”) (Gudmarsdottir 2010, 210). At the end of
the novel, during Tom Joad’s farewell speech to his mother, the elements of political protest and Christian humanism merge into a single faith in the humanist
struggle for dignity. Tom argues that, by devoting his life to the downtrodden, his
individual self will merge with the human Oversoul.
A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a big one […] then I’ll bearound in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fightso hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’llbe there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry
an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live inthe houses they build—why, I’ll be there. (Steinbeck 1993, 534)

Tom’s devotion to the struggle against human suffering expresses a Christianfaith in the dignity of humankind. By emptying his egoistic self and committing
to the cause of humankind, he becomes part of the Oversoul that animates thelove human beings show each other.
Given this explicit humanism and New Deal reformism, there is no point inarguing Steinbeck consciously was a post-humanist avant la lettre or a protoideologue of ecological class politics. Nonetheless, his anthropocentrism can be
strategically useful if it remains compatible with post-humanist ecological classpolitics. Steinbeck’s naturalism offsets some of the lofty humanism of Christianity and the New Deal, bringing him closer to post-humanist environmentalism.
Steinbeckian characters tend to act very animalistically. Despite their Christianmorals, they are not upstanding exemplars of the Protestant ethic but sensuous
creatures craving fulfilment of their bodily needs. As early critic Alfred Kazin
wrote disparagingly, “Steinbeck’s people are always on the verge of becoming
human, but never do” (quoted in Dickstein 2004, 118). Steinbeck held a profound interest in animal life and regarded human beings as just another speciesof animal (Kelley 2002, 255–265). Jim Casy, for instance, rejects the priesthood
because he denies the sinfulness of bodily desire and fails to repress his sexual
impulses. Casy preaches the faith of a carnal Oversoul revelling in bodily pleasure and sexual lust:268Tim Christiaens
Here’s my preachin’ grace. An’ here’s them people getting’ grace so hard they’re
jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. Now they say layin’ up with a girl comes from the devil. But
the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass. An’
I got thinkin’ how in hell, s’cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so fullof the Holy Sperit that it’s spoutin’ out of her nose an’ ears. (Steinbeck 1993, 26)

The implicit undermining of Christian humanism continues throughout thenovel. While the text abounds in Biblical references and presents itself as an
American Exodus, the story of the Joads deviates sharply from that of the Mosaic
Israelites by decentring human salvation (Seelye 2002, 20). Steinbeck emphasises
the analogies to Exodus in the first chapters to present the migrants’ lot as atransition from enslavement to the promised land. The evicted farmers think:“maybe we can start again, in the new rich land—in California, where the fruit
grows. We’ll start over” (Steinbeck 1993, 111). California, however, is not theland of milk and honey that the Joads deserve (ibid., 321). They just move fromone enslavement to industry to another without liberation. In the final chapters,
Rose of Sharon gives birth to the baby she has been carrying since the start of
the novel. But again, salvific expectations are subverted, as the baby is stillborn
and her uncle John sends it floating down the river during a flood like a macabre
baby Moses, saying, “Go down in the street an’ rot an’ tell ‘em that way” (ibid.,
569). In Steinbeck’s universe, there is no providential God looking out for thevulnerable and the weak. “An Almighty God never raised no wages” (ibid., 320).
Only a combination of sturdy perseverance and dumb luck allows the Joads tosurvive the hardships of the road and the discriminatory violence of California(Seelye 2002, 22). In contrast to the promise of Revelations, where the heavy
vineyards announce the wrath of God, there is no transcendent God to avenge
the Oklahoma migrants. No one will save the downtrodden but the people themselves (Gudmarsdottir 2010, 214). If God is an Oversoul present in humankind,then only humankind can save itself from enslavement.
This anti-salvific message is where Steinbeck connects to the ecological classpolitics of Tsing and Latour. For the latter, the ecological class is the collective ofliving beings robbed of the means of reproduction. Capitalism ruins itself by undercutting the means of reproduction of life on Earth. The response to the dissolution of the web of life is a return to ecological relations. Even amidst the ruinsof capitalism, living beings like the matsutake possess the potential to form new,mutually strengthening ecological relations with other organisms. For Steinbeck
as well, the only adequate response left to the Joads is stubborn endurance, despite their livelihoods falling apart, and a continued commitment to mutual aid.
By the end of the novel, the region is struck by a flood, the government refuses tosend medical help, and the Joads have lost their car, on which their employment

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and income depend. They are stripped from all means of reproduction. Yet thebook does not end in apocalyptic hopelessness. The final scene—so scandalous
the 1940 film adaptation chose to skip it—portrays Rose of Sharon feeding breast
milk meant for her stillborn baby to an old, starving stranger. Steinbeck’s editors
urged him to delete the chapter or at least give the stranger a backstory, but Steinbeck refused, claiming that “the giving of the breast has no more sentiment than
the giving of a piece of bread […] If there is a symbol, it is a survival symbol, nota love symbol, it must be an accident, it must be a stranger, and it must be quick”(qtd. in Seelye 2002, 18). As a symbol of survival, this uncomfortable nativity
scene emphasises that, in a Godless world, the relations of care living beings
nurture among each other is the only means of reproduction left.
The most explicit description of ecological relations as an answer to hardshipunder Depression-era capitalism comes from Steinbeck’s portrayal of the Joadfamily. When living in their truck, for instance, Steinbeck writes about the Joads,
As the cars moved westward, each member of the family grew into his proper
place, grew into his duties; so that each member, old and young, had his place inthe car […] And this was done without command. The families, which had been
units of which the boundaries were a house at night, a farm by day, changed theirboundaries. In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found. (Steinbeck 1993,
250)

The family is a porous assemblage of living beings who develop cooperative relations through a back-and-forth rhythm that slowly generates a close-knit community of mutual aid. The boundaries of this family unit are not fixed in advance,
but change according to shifting circumstances. Along Route 66, for instance,on their way to California, the Joads successfully cooperate with strangers toform temporary camping sites. People spontaneously cooperate and thereby
form inclusive communities that support their members’ well-being better thananyone could have done on their own. Steinbeck revels at migrant cooperative“techniques of building worlds” with their own rules and government (Steinbeck
1993, 248):
Every night a world created, complete with furniture—friends made and enemies
established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men,with humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world,
established; and every morning the world torn down like a circus. At first the families were timid in the building and tumbling worlds, but gradually the techniqueof building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then laws were270Tim Christiaens
made, then codes came into being. And as the worlds moved westward they weremore complete and better furnished, for their builders were more experienced inbuilding them. (ibid.)

The slow calibration of immanent cooperative relations that Tsing observes in
the matsutake’s web of life finds here its equivalent in the spontaneous collaboration of migrants along Route 66. They establish new lifeworlds that sustain
a viable enclave in hostile territory. Through the slow process of mutual affectation, these lifeworlds become richer and more supportive so that they allow
their members to survive amidst the ruins of Depression-era capitalism. Though
Steinbeck often prefers to use the language of Christian neighbourly love, which
pushes him towards humanistic language, it takes no dogmatic post-humanist tocall this ‘making-kin.’

Steinbeck, a Post-Humanist Interpreter of the Land?
Showing that Steinbeck animalises his human characters or champions ecological relations among humans, however, does not make him a post-humanist. That
requires an extension of ecological relations to non-human beings, which Steinbeck never explicitly does. However, there are more implicit clues for a post-humanist reading of The Grapes of Wrath. Some of Steinbeck’s readers have, for instance, focused on the humanisation of cars in The Grapes of Wrath (Griffin and
Freedman 1962, 569–580; DeLucia 2014, 138–154). The Joad family is not only
composed of human members and pets, but also the family Hudson Super-Sex
Sedan gets its own characterisation and biography. More pertinent is, however,Steinbeck’s description of the entanglement between farmers and their land. As
McParland observes, “we are introduced to the changing colours of the sky, theshadows of dust upon the land, and the life of animals and human beings whoface the tumultuous transitions of the natural world. […] Humanity is close to
the earth, interdependent with an ecosystem that has been damaged” (McParland 2016, 75). Steinbeck describes subsistence farming as a close-knit cooperation of human and non-human life under adverse circumstances. For Steinbeck,‘ownership of the land’ is not a legal title but a state of deep intertwinement withthe soil through sustained labour and hardship (Steinbeck 1993, 41). By working(with) the land, one slowly develops a back-and-forth dynamic of bonding withthe soil and its offspring. Though the words were obviously unavailable to a 1939
novel, today’s post-humanists would call this ‘making-kin’ or ‘ecological relationality.’ Once these deep mutual roots of subsistence farmers and land are established, Steinbeck even argues that it is impossible to extract the farmers from

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this assemblage without fundamentally rupturing their individual identities. It is
impossible for subsistence farmers to start over elsewhere, on new land, because
they always carry with them personal histories that are embedded in a particularplace left behind (ibid., 111). Steinbeck thus ultimately defends a place-boundethics of human and non-human symbiosis. It is also in this area that Steinbeckpresents a critique of capitalism as a process of alienation-as-deracination.

Alienation-as-Deracination in The Grapes of Wrath
Like Tsing, Steinbeck criticises capitalism as an uprooting force, but the focus
shifts from the displacement of commodified mushrooms to that of farmers ascommodified labour power. Steinbeck wanted to spark outrage among his middle-class readers through a blunt presentation of the hardships suffered by poor
farmers and their land. Here, it is not the colonial plantation but its American
successor, large-scale industrialised cotton farming, that is presented as the spaceof alienation for both workers and their land. Subsistence farmers are ‘tractored
off the land’ and thereby transformed into a reserve army of abstract labour power readily deployed whenever their labour profits Californian industrial farmers.
People are uprooted from the soil that raised them and turned into mobile carriers of labour power, leaving them without personal purpose or identity. They
are robbed of the ecological relations that constituted their shared identity with
their community and land. In the words of Jim Casy, “us, we got a job to do, an’
they’s a thousan’ ways, an’ we don’ know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray,it’d be for the folks that don’ know which way to turn” (Steinbeck 1993, 184). Being reduced to for-hire commodities that move to wherever the labour market
needs them dissolves people’s bonds with the web of life.
The same applies to the bare land deserted by the emigrating farmers. This
also suffers a loss of identity and resilience from being violently torn away fromtheir cultivators. Not just human beings, but also the soil loses its means of reproduction, turning into a worn-out territory awaiting rejuvenating encounterswith other organisms that never come. Steinbeck documents how a handful ofcompanies monopolise the land and turn it into a passive profit-making vehicle.
The choice of cotton production is, for instance, particularly damaging to thesoil (ibid., 40). It exhausts the land more quickly than the latter can regenerate itself, reducing Oklahoma to a dust bowl. However, agricultural companies
are not bothered with this looming environmental catastrophe. They plan for
short-term profits, after which they either sell or abandon the soil as bare land.
They are not interested in fostering a mutually beneficent lifeworld with the soil.
Their business highlights accelerated profit-making rather than the slow mutual

272Tim Christiaens

affectation of ecological relations. According to Steinbeck, industrialised monoculture distinguishes itself from subsistence farming through its affective detachment from the web of life that determines the soil’s long-term fecundity.
And it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on
paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only thatthey owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it. And some of
the farms grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more,so large that it took batteries of bookkeepers to keep track of interest and gain
and loss […] Then such a farmer really became a storekeeper, and kept a store.
(Steinbeck 1993, 298)

In chapter 5 of The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck gives a detailed analysis of how
alienation-as-deracination works in Depression-era America from the perspective of an outside observer (ibid., 138–148). The chapter documents how industrial monoculture replaces subsistence farmers with bare land. Surprisingly, no
one wants to upend the Oklahoma region, yet an entire self-propelling system
makes people so dependent on big banks and landowners that they have to do
capital’s bidding. Steinbeck mentions the case of one of the people driving the
Joads off their land (ibid., 45). He admits that he does not want to operate as anagent of the bank’s violent interests, yet he must if he is to avoid his own children
starving. Even large landowners themselves do not want to evict their tenants,
and yet they have to. They are beholden to the big banks, their investors andcreditors. If landowners allow unprofitable farming on their territory, they will
ultimately pay a heavy price. At the bank as well, the employees hold no desire
to cause suffering to the countryside, and yet the dispossession of rural families
continues unabated. “The bank—the monster has to have profits all the time. It
can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It
can’t stay one size” (ibid., 40). The reproductive capacities of the region are steadily undercut without anyone wilfully responsible for the outcome.
The alienation process Steinbeck describes dissolves the direct bonds people
have with each other and the land in favour of a centrally coordinated system
geared toward profit-maximisation. Individual beings are thereby transformed
into living accessories for a self-propelling system. It seems like none of them
are really in control of their own actions. “The monster isn’t men, but it canmake men do what it wants” (ibid., 42). Capital is acting through them to pursue its own interests. These employees or farmers cannot take ownership overtheir own decisions, because they are subsumed in a system that runs by its own
unaccountable laws. They are stand-alone cogs in a chain of commands that isdriven by an anonymous power. One either submits to these imperatives or one

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is discarded. Bare land is purportedly collateral damage to be accepted to keep
feeding the capitalist monster.
Ultimately, capital drives people to undercut the reproduction of the area anddissolve the bonds constituting the web of life until nothing but bare land is left.
And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of themhated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and fromfeeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said,
The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though
the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had
ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines andmasters all at the same time. (Steinbeck 1993, 38–39)

In Steinbeck’s novel, capital appears as a monster that instrumentalises the living
beings that it subsumes. Living beings are reduced to “robots in the seat” (ibid.,43) through which capital enacts its own interests. “The monster that sent thetractor out, had somehow gotten into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled and muzzled him” (ibid., 44). Farmers no longer directly relate
to their land or vice versa; capital rather acts through the farmers’ hands, brains
and muscles to take from the land what it can turn into profitable commodities.
They are passive media for the self-actualisation of capital accumulation. This
process dispossesses living beings of their own actions and puts them in a relation of dependency to an alien power. Capitalist accumulation operates as a selfpropelling machine that dispossesses its agents of their autonomous agency torelate to their own lifeworld. These agents are turned into passive cogs powerless
to change the monster’s course—even when it is heading for disaster.

The Wrath at the End of the World
One should not too quickly identify Steinbeck as a post-humanist prophet, but
he shares a number of affinities with post-humanist environmentalism that are
helpful for the project of ecological class politics. Through a parallel reading ofTsing’s Mushroom at the End of the World and Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, I
have sought to uncover these affinities. Firstly, both start from a relational ontology of ecological relations, though Steinbeck’s version remains more wedded tohumankind than Tsing’s. The primary means of reproduction for living beingsis their capacity to form cooperative ecological relations with other organisms

274Tim Christiaens

that strengthen their common resilience and chances of survival. Steinbeck’s predilection for animalistic human characters struggling in a Godless world andhis naturalistic description of the Oklahoma soil as a character in its own right,
move the novelist closer to an ecological class politics. Steinbeckian characters
engage in ecological relations beyond the human sphere. Secondly, Tsing andSteinbeck both lament alienation-as-deracination. Capital uproots living beings
from the web of life to mobilise them as stand-alone commodities in the capitalist valorisation cycle. This not only renders beings dependent on capital and its
pursuit of profit, but also condemns them to a fate of bare land once their value
for capital is exhausted. The strategic advantage of Steinbeck’s anthropocentrism
is, on the other hand, that it facilitates affective understanding of the plight ofbare land. A politically effective response to the planetary crisis requires somestrategic anthropocentrism to first lay out the challenge of reproducing humanlife on Earth before it clarifies how this struggle necessitates a shift of our humansolidarities towards other, non-human beings. Once readers agree with the diagnosis of alienation-as-deracination in the case of uprooted farmers, it is easier toargue the same critique for the deracination of the web of life in general.
Nevertheless, Tsing and Steinbeck do not preach despair. Tsing is well awareof the ruins at the end of the world, but she praises the matsutake because it
manifests a remnant capacity for ecological world-building that partly escapes
capitalist control. Life persists and renews its ecological bonds even under catastrophic circumstances. Steinbeck also affirms the inexhaustible capacity of living beings to form new relations of mutual aid. Despite all the hardships the
Joads encounter, they are “aimed right at goin’ on” (Steinbeck 1993, 539). The
Joads start out as individualistic farmers who praise autarky and independence
above all else, but in the face of capitalist dispossession, this quest for autarky
mutates into an appeal to collective solidarity:
Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of thething you fear. This is the zygote. For here “I lost my land” is changed; a cell is split
and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—“We lost our land.” The danger ishere, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first ‘we’
there grows a still more dangerous thing. (ibid., 193)

Marginalised labour migrants only stand a chance against alienation if they cultivate a ‘we’ of collaborative relations. They can form a counter-will to the instrumentalising force of capital and thereby resist their deracination and subsumption under capital’s monstrous power. Though individually they can only oppose
their subjection at great personal cost, their collective organisation can tip theBare L and275

balance in their favour. The capitalist monster would have to retreat when met
by the superior strength of the web of life regenerated.
And [resistant migrants] stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to thescreaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch themountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In
the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing
heavy for the vintage. (ibid., 445)

Notes
1.

2.
3.

4.
5.
6.

Marx himself became increasingly aware of the impossibility of separating the economy from ecology (see Saito 2017).
The concept ‘web of life’ comes from Moore (2015).
For the notion of ‘affect’ implying a simultaneous capacity to move and be moved byother beings, see Deleuze’s interpretation of ‘affect’ in Spinoza (Deleuze 1981, 66–69).
See Marx (1996), especially chapter 15 on ‘Machinery and Modern Industry.’On the moments of friction and resistance to alienation, see Tsing (2011, 4).
See, for instance, Malm (2020).

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5.2Interspecies Storytelling forPrudent Predation
Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan

Fish of the same species were comparable to flocks of birds living in trees—they
did not slaughter one another. As to the food-chain issue, whether some fishes areeaten by others, or vice versa, is decided by the size of their mouths and has nothing to do with dominant or dominated classes, smart beings or stupid beings.
—Syaman Rapongan (Rapongan 2015, 92)
Someone who uses money to buy fish from someone else is the most uselesskind of man.
—Syaman Rapongan’s father (Rapongan 2005, 44)

A Multispecies Precarity?
What can a predatory fish teach us about precarity, about the increasingly precarious interdependence of animal and human labour? For the academic conference that preceded this edited volume, I wanted to explore this question with theinterspecies dimensions in the ocean writings by Tao novelist Syaman Rapongan.
I felt stimulated by philosopher and queer theorist Jasbir Puar’s question during
an online “precarity talk” meeting in 2012: “can we think of precarity ‘beyond’the human?” (2012, 171). And the response by philosopher and gender theorist
Judith Butler, “we have to rethink the human in light of precarity, showing that
there is no human without those networks of life within which human life isbut one sort of life. Otherwise, we end up breaking off the human from all of its
sustaining conditions (and in that way become complicit with the process of precarisation itself)” (173). While anthropologist Anna Tsing, in her study on the
globalised commodity and human labour chains of matsutake mushrooms, introduces the term precarity rather loosely in a more-than-human context (Tsing2015), literary scholar Nicole Shukin investigates more theoretically the conceptualisation of a politicised “becoming-species of precarity” (2018, 123). Shukin

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reads in Fukushima’s rapidly reproducing radioactive wild boars, which impede
the human impulse to repair malfunctioning infrastructures such as contaminated farmland, a “multispecies common in-the-making” (ibid., 117). According to her, the wild boars’ perturbation of the “sovereign systems of the humanand capital” (ibid.) resonates with cultural theorist Lauren Berlant’s conceptionof “nonsovereign relationality as the foundational quality of being in common”(2016, 394). Shukin believes a theory of precarity is well suited to account for a
multispecies common constituted by non-sovereign relationality because it canaddress the domination of animals by humans and capitalism by exposing thematerial and biological labour of animals (Hribal 2007), as well as their affective
and immaterial labour (Shukin 2018, 120).
However, Shukin’s theorising does not provide fertile ground for our chapter
because it adheres to a paradigm of knowledge that is incompatible with Syaman
Rapongan’s animal writings. Shukin’s article can be situated in the post-humanist
multispecies paradigm currently dominant in the Western humanities. While
post-humanism has undoubtedly helped debunk heteropatriarchal anthropocentrism and binary dualisms, we may wonder how this doctrine relates to nonWestern knowledge. The premise of multispecies discourse is a Cartesian divide
between sentient humans and mechanistic animals that has never existed in Indigenous lifeworlds (Bolter 2016, 2–3). Indigenous and decolonial scholars accuse post-humanist and new-materialist multispecies philosophers of theft anderasure: they pluck Indigenous knowledge from different Nations, cut loose its
original roots and relations, repackage it in Western abstract models of knowledge, and then present it as a ‘new’ progressive theory in which the location of
the philosopher and Indigenous epistemes are silenced (Sundberg 2013; Watts
2013; Todd 2016). The resulting reduction of Indigenous knowledge to a transferable analytic leads to its recolonisation within Western epistemology (Chandler and Reid 2020) and, as such, legitimises and universalises this epistemology
as the only knowledge that matters (Sundberg 2013, 36). A side effect of thisoperation is the multispecies appropriation of animal lifeworlds as a theoretical resource to mythologically ‘grieve’ and transcend a human present in ‘ruins’through speculation (Watson 2016; Chandler and Reid 2020).
In light of the critique on multispecies post-humanism, I return to Nicole
Shukin’s notion of a non-sovereign multispecies common. While countering
sovereignty is understandable from the perspective of the “academic-industrial
complex” that is dominated by Western epistemology, white heteropatriarchyand global capitalism (Smith 2010, 63), and while there is debate within Indigenous studies about the discourse of sovereignty as a Western conceptualisation (Martineau 2015, 22–30), Indigenous scholars regard sovereignty as a key
concept for asserting their Nations’ territory, resurgence and freedom (Simpson

Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation281

2017). Quandamooka scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson argues that Indigenous
sovereignty cannot be ceded as “[b]loodline to country is about sharing the life
force with the ancestors that created our land,” and “[y]ou can put on our country anything you like, but we and the land remain sovereign” (Moreton-Robinson 2016).
Cree scholar Sharon Venne points out that while sovereignty denotes absolute
power in Western epistemology, Cree sovereignty is “related to our connections
to the earth and is inherent” (Venne 1998, 23). Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee
scholar Vanessa Watts elaborates that such relational sovereignty stems from
Indigenous histories that locate humans as the last species arriving on Earth,
implying that humans arrived in an already functioning non-human society
with certain values and ethics. This meant that humans were dependent on nonhuman Nations with whom they had to make interspecies agreements to ensure their own survival (Watts 2013, 25). As such, sovereignty extends beyond
the human, as Venne explains: “We call the buffalo, or the wolves, the fish, thetrees, and all are nations. Each is sovereign, an equal part of the creation, interdependent, interwoven, and all related” (Venne 1998, 23). While Shukin pleas fora non-sovereign multispecies common to extend our self-determination beyond
the human, without clarifying what such common might look like, Watts argues
that within Indigenous histories the interwoven sovereignty of human and nonhuman Nations has always been essential in the “formation of governance” andan “obligation to original instructions from the earth” (Watts 2013, 27–28).
Indigenous sovereignty places limitations on what precarity theory can do. A
conference debating the applicability of precarity theory in post-colonial studies
highlighted the universalising dilemma of precarity (Hinkson 2020). Cultural
theorist Simon During, who first argued for a reconsideration of the subalternin light of “the precariat as a global group which includes people from many
classes, religions and cultures as they are swept into capitalism’s most recent
phase [of global neoliberalism]” (During 2015, 37), acknowledged the limited
applicability of this scope to particular and singular contexts (During 2020). Decolonial theorists Elizabeth Strakosch and Alissa Macoun argue against precarity
theory by building on the seminal article “Decolonization is not a metaphor”
by Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck and non-indigenous theorist K. Wayne Yang, inwhich the latter argue for “an ethic of incommensurability, which recognizes
what is distinct, what is sovereign” (Tuck and Yang 2012, 28). Strakosch andMacoun state that “theoretical moves which abstract, analogise or universalisecolonialism to a global theoretical register, disconnected from land and fromlocal political relationships, […] show how a certain type of political thinking
can tend to erase the authority of Indigenous peoples and reproduce colonial
epistemologies” (Strakosch and Macoun 2020, 507).

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In their dedication and concern for perspectives beyond the human Western
post-humanism and Indigenous studies may find common grounds, but the topic of my contribution requires me to privilege the arguments of decolonial andIndigenous scholars. In doing so, I seek to respect Dene scholar Glen Coulthard’s
notion of “grounded normativity” (2014, 13), which implies that the discussionof Rapongan’s story “The Eyes of the Sky” in the following sections includes only
Syaman Rapongan’s own writings and the work of others who also identify as
Indigenous Tao. I am also mindful of Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake
Simpson’s exhortation that the ethical practice of grounded normativity implies
that one cannot simply take theories at face value but must engage with the people who embody those theories (Simpson 2017, 66). Following this guideline, I
want to show who the gatekeepers of knowledge were and how I gained accessto certain places, people and knowledge. I attempt to do so by approaching Syaman Rapongan’s literature through what geographers Carrie Mott and Daniel
Cockayne call a “conscientious engagement” with the politics of citation (Mottand Cockayne 2017, 956). Opposing quantitative positivism and problematichierarchies of knowledge, Mott and Cockayne argue for citation as a performative technology that reveals how different voices relate to one another (Mott andCockayne 2017). In the final section, I will expand my discussion of Rapongan’s
literature to recent insights from biological studies and how it prefigures not a
multispecies class but an international interspecies alliance.

Interspecies StorytellingI encountered the ocean writings by novelist Syaman Rapongan in the context
of my doctoral artistic field research on the Pacific Island of Pongso no Tao (alsoknown as Lanyu or Orchid Island). With my research, I wanted to counter ‘precariousness’ as the condition of our time threatened by ecological collapse. In
particular, I wanted to analyse and create images to address the current imagination impasse between apocalyptic doomsday scenarios on the one hand andunabashed technological optimism with destructive consequences on the other.
Pongso no Tao first caught my attention when I heard about the infamous casewhen the Taiwanese settler government installed a nuclear waste repository on
the island in 1982. This facility is still active and has sparked several waves ofprotest, especially after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Syaman
Rapongan is known for his opposition to such colonial ventures, and his novels
express the Tao people’s intimate bond with the ocean and their cultural heterogeneity. As a fisherman and novelist, Rapongan identifies as an Indigenous Tao
in solidarity with other Pacific Island Nations (Huang and Rapongan 2021). I

Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation283

was Syaman Rapongan’s neighbour during my two-month stay on Pongso no
Tao in 2020. I returned to the island and his home several times, and we havean ongoing dialogue about how to position myself respectfully and consensually
toward his work and Tao knowledge. This chapter is the result of that dialogue,
a deep examination of Rapongan’s translated writings, my immersion on Pongso
no Tao, and countless dives into its ocean waters.
Syaman Rapongan’s excerpted, abridged and translated “The Eyes of the Sky”
from his novel Eyes of the Sky (2012) tells a story of colonial conflict and interdependent interspecies labour through the narrating point of view of a Cilat, a big
silverish predatory fish also known as giant trevally or jackfish (Rapongan 2021).
In summary, the Cilat fish sets off the narration by recalling Tao people’s history.
It recounts a time when the ancestral islanders transgressed “Heavenly Law” bycooking flying fish with other seafood, which led to sickness for humans and fish
alike, threatening the first with extinction (ibid., 129). At the request of the gods,
Mavaheng so Panid, the black-winged leader of the flying fish, explained to thehumans the cause of the sickness and taught them how to classify the fish—what
fish can be caught under which circumstances and eaten by whom. Since then,a healthy and sustainable bond has existed between the Tao people and the fish,
which the Tao honour through sacred ceremonies and taboos (ibid., 129–30).
The Cilat fish proudly states that until today, he is the Tao people’s most prestigious catch as they “tell endless tales of fighting with” a “fierce and strong andhandsome” fish like him. At the same time, the Cilat complains that his “old”
meat is despised elsewhere, where it is traded as “cheap” fish, and sold cut up andmixed with other species as a mere breakfast supplement. A turning point in thislamentable evolution occurred when from 2000 to 2006, during the flying fishseasons, “fleets of death” came from the neighbouring island of Taiwan to Pongso
no Tao to catch many tons of flying fish, threatening both predatory fish, such as
the Cilat, and the Tao people with famine and extinction. These colonial operations continued until young Tao men with speedboats blocked the invading ships
and prevented the impending extinction of the flying fish. The Cilat fish recounts
that he was then free again to hunt flying fish, and stresses that he feels “deeply respected” by the Tao people who still follow the principles that Mavaheng so Panid
once explained to them. The Cilat concludes that the ongoing agreement between
the Tao people and the fish allows him to reach a “natural end” (ibid., 131–132).
Despite being among the sixteen Indigenous peoples that are officially recognised by the settler government of Taiwan (Silan and Munkejord 2022, 1), which
is dominated by Han-Taiwanese people, the Tao people did not identify as Indigenous until recently, instead regarding themselves as ocean islanders. Indeed,
the strong and dangerous Kuroshio Current historically separated Pongso no Taofrom Taiwan and made other, more distant Pacific Islands easier to reach for the284

Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan

Tao islanders navigating in non-motorised boats. As literature scholar Hsinya
Huang elaborates on Rapongan’s writings, “Tao ancestors used to move freely in
the Pacific Ocean, following the migratory route of the flying fish that was subject
to the flow of the Kuroshio/Black Current” (2016, 187–188). During the 2020
harvest festival of Pongso no Tao’s Imorod tribe, I witnessed a public apology forthe nuclear storage site made by the Taiwanese vice-president. This expressionof remorse repeated the official apology by President Tsai in 2016 “[f]or the four
centuries of pain and mistreatment” inflicted upon Indigenous peoples (Office of
the President Republic of China (Taiwan) 2016). Cou scholar tibusungu’e vayayana points out that, compared to previously apologising settler states such as Australia and Canada, the Taiwanese apology was “more comprehensive due to thefact that Tsai apologized for specific mistreatments,” such as the nuclear waste repository on Pongso no Tao, and “included the wrongdoings by each regime overthe past 400 years.” However, vayayana continues that the suffering from “the lossof language and culture” due to an “assimilationist education” policy seems to be“the sole aspect uncovered in Tsai’s Apology” (2021, 36). It is to this violent process of “Sinicization” (Rapongan 2004, 16; 2000, 102; 1998) facilitated by Christianity and armed forces (Rapongan 2022, 58) that Rapongan’s novels testify.
As becomes clear from the story in “The Eyes of the Sky,” the Tao people cause
a troubling obstacle for the Taiwanese fishing industry, which aims to deploy its
extractive operations on Tao territory. As demonstrated by Tao people’s resistance, only the erasure of the Tao people would establish the settler coloniser’s
ambition of fishing in the ocean waters surrounding Pongso no Tao. The Taopeople have historically depended on Pongso no Tao’s immediate sea environment for food, and more recently for tourism. In this ocean environment, themigratory flying fish shoals embody a key function as several human and nonhuman predators adapt their behaviours to their migratory movements. The
Cilat fish, for example, as described by Rapongan, “[f]or the season of the flying fish […] comes back to the island” (2021, 130–131). According to the Tao
ethnobiologist Syaman Misiva, the flying fish (‘alibangbang’ in Tao language) is
the Tao’s most important source of protein, and it is also the only fish “without
gender [categorical] limitation,” meaning that it is edible for “male, female, elderly, younger, pregnant women, and breast feeding mothers” (Misiva 2012, 6).
The flying fish is a sacred fish given by the gods whose migratory movements
structure the Tao’s yearly cycle and ceremonies (ibid., 7). Rapongan’s story showsthat its black-winged leader taught the islanders that fish are sovereign beings
that willingly give their lives to humans under certain conditions that must be
respected as sacred laws. This interspecies relation has been established overmany generations and reflects their historical interdependence inside the ocean’scomplex food webs.

Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation285

Rapongan’s choice of a Cilat, a predatory fish, as narrator calls for more discussion. To a reader unfamiliar with his novels, a non-human narrator seems apriori fraught. The general view is that humans cannot know what non-humanspecies feel, let alone how they think or speak, because they have different bodystructures, organs and senses through which they experience their environment
in a unique way. According to this line of thinking, any told feeling, thought orstory of a non-human species must be anthropomorphic, a projection of humantraits or behaviour onto non-human entities (Parkinson 2020, 1). According to
critics, such anthropomorphism risks relational violence by denying difference
and autonomy (Aloi 2012, 97; Weil 2012, 19). Rapongan is aware that his readers
might share such anthropomorphic disapproval and might view a fish narrator
with suspicion and possibly reject the story before it has even begun. Anticipating such a reaction, Rapongan has the Cilat fish introduce himself with a selfconscious remark at the beginning of the story:
Now, a so-called “civilized” person like you needn’t question how it is that I, a
‘fish,’ am telling this story. It is enough for me to say that you need not be cynical,
need not sit in front of a computer or a television all day all year long and thereby
presume to know everything there is to know about the world. (2021, 129)

Rapongan insinuates that the reader may not believe that one can know what
a fish is thinking or saying, not because it is impossible or unethical to know,
but because one cannot know by sitting in front of a virtual screen or, as hewrites elsewhere in reference to his father, from “the uselessness of book learning” (2005, 44).
To understand how a fish thinks, against and beyond anthropomorphism, it
seems necessary to embrace the idea that the ocean is a school from which one
can learn by participating in the life-generating mechanism of predation. Asidefrom being a writer, Syaman Rapongan is an experienced fisherman and spearfishing hunter. In his autobiographical novel Cold Sea, Deep Feeling: An Ocean
Pilgrim (1997), Rapongan writes extensively about how ocean hunting slowly
shapes local ecological knowledge. Fish hunting requires critical skills and extensive expertise, such as sensing the relationship between the moon and thetides, the movements of currents, weather patterns, directions of winds, danger
signs, or the different species of fish and their behaviours (Huang and Rapongan
2021, 70–71). Faced with the agony of being a novice hunter, Rapongan recounts
the comforting words spoken to him by his spearfishing partner and cousin:
Men who dive to spear fish have to be cheated by the fish many times, and thosetimes are what count as your experience. The ocean floor is the world of the fish.

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Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan
We are only strange creatures that occasionally come and take away their lives.
If you chase a fish, it is naturally going to swim for its life, so you’re not going tospear the big, smart fish. Aside from relying on our experience and strength, wemust use some of our wisdom to understand the habits of each type of fish. That’s
the only way to make progress. (2005, 51)

These exhortations show how oceanic knowledge is shaped by the accumulated
experience of predation, where understanding the behaviour of each fish effectively makes the fish into ocean teachers that can only be captured by inwardly
simulating and emulating their skills.
Rapongan’s cousin argues that this embodied knowledge must be supplemented by Tao wisdom, which denotes their ancestral knowledge mutually shared
between humans and fish and shared collectively through stories told by fellow
hunters and Elders. In his novel Black Wings (1999), Syaman Rapongan writes:
My great-great-grand father and all my forebears lived in this small island. The
moment they were born, they fell in love with the sea, entertaining themselves
by watching, worshiping, and adoring the sea. The sea-loving genes are alreadycontained in my body, passed down from generation to generation. I love thesea fervently, almost to the degree of mania. (Rapongan 1999, 80, qtd. in Huang
2016, 188)

Such age-old oceanic understanding leads to the subversive representation offish, as Hsinya Huang elaborates on Rapongan’s literary work, from mere foodfor humans to being “pressed into the foreground alongside humans as creative
agents and active participants” (192). As creative, active and, I would add, sovereign agents, it is no surprise that fish emerge as teachers and even narratorsin Rapongan’s stories that continually humble human agency or authoritarianknowledge.
Illustrative of the oceanic intuition of the Tao people is their origin history in“The Eyes of the Sky,” in which the leader of the black-winged flying fish teaches
the Tao people how to categorise fish, and through which a lasting agreement isestablished between humans and fish. Being Tao people’s primal fish, and sincecatching them in large enough quantities requires a thorough understanding of
their habits, it becomes clear why the flying fish serves as the cultural teacher of
the Tao people par excellence. Mirroring the teacher of the black-winged flying
fish, the Cilat narrator in turn becomes the appropriate teacher of the contemporary international fishing conflict for Rapongan’s readership. It is striking how,in a story that recounts the rivalry between the Taiwanese fishing industry and
the Tao fishermen over the catch of flying fish, a fourth character, the Cilat fish,

Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation287

is added to the story as an external but interdependent narrator. As mentioned,
Rapongan acknowledges that his readers may have different assumptions andperceptions from his own. In addition to rejecting a Cilat narrator as anthropomorphic, readers might downplay the history of the Tao and its teachings about
an ongoing interspecies agreement as mere myth, fantasy or superstition. Consequently, simply conveying that the Tao people resisted the invasion of the Taiwanese ships because of the teachings of the flying fish leader might not suffice
to convince his readers of the importance of interspecies dependence or cultural
heterogeneity. I argue that Rapongan not only emphasises his Indigenous Tao
perspective, but that his choice of a Cilat narrator also allows him to make anecological argument about the ocean’s food webs.

Prudent Predation
In oceanic ecosystems, both humans and the Cilat are predators, and in its food
web hierarchies, the Cilat occupies a position between fishermen (both Taiwanese and Tao) and flying fish. As such, the Cilat is particularly cognisant of thespecific dynamics in the fishing relationship between the Tao and Taiwanesefishers and the flying fish, from the perspective of both predator (of the flyingfish) and prey (of the fishers). The Cilat attests to its interchangeable position
as prey/predator and points to the primordial predatory mechanism that sustains all life forms. Predation, as a reality and as a metaphor, has been wrongly demonised as a human evil, but, as Rapongan reminds us in another story,“whether some fishes are eaten by others, or vice versa, is decided by the size of
their mouths and has nothing to do with dominant or dominated classes, smart
beings or stupid beings” (2015, 92). Each animal participates in the exchange of
the Earth’s common substances to replenish its energy through the consumptionof tissues from organisms other than itself, and although many species feed only
on plants, herbivory could be understood as a form of plant predation (Petrakis
and Legakis 2006, 87). Furthermore, ecological studies stress aquatic predators’
essential ecological functions, such as controlling food webs, nutrient cycling,
engineering ecosystems, disease transmission, mediating species invasions andeven mediating climate change (Hammerschlag et al. 2019). In the complex food
web of the story’s ocean environment, both the Tao people and the Cilat fish act
as top predators, perhaps matched only by the hammerhead shark.
Yet not all forms of predation are desirable, as the Cilat storyteller demonstrates when he recounts how both the unsustainable fishing practices of Tao’s
original ancestors and Taiwanese ‘fleets of death’ led to near-extinction. And
while species extinction is sometimes inevitable in the evolutionary process,288

Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan

there is a strong scientific consensus on the vital role of biodiversity for species
survival, ecosystem health and human well-being (Lajaunie and Morand 2017).
Rapongan’s claim that “if there is no ocean, there will be no fish and thus no
wisdom” (2012, 29, qtd. in Huang 2016, 193) resonates with biologist Edward
O. Wilson’s argument that “[b]iodiversity as a whole forms a shield protecting
each of the species that together compose it, ourselves included” (2016, 14). For
years, scientists have sounded the alarm bells, speaking of a biodiversity crisis
induced by human activity, which is leading to increased extinction rates (withbackground extinction rates one hundred to a thousand times the norm) (Lawton and May 1995) that may lead to a sixth mass extinction event (Kolbert 2014;
Cowie, Bouchet and Fontaine 2022). If predation, especially apex predation,is known to be beneficial to biodiversity, how can we distinguish in ecologicalterms between the fishing practices of Tao fishermen and those of the Taiwanesefishing industry?
In their recent study on different predatory modes, biologists Orestes U.
Gutiérrez Al-Khudhairy and Axel G. Rossberg contrast the models of inefficient,
prudent and imprudent predation. While scientific consensus exists about inefficient predation leading to predator extirpation, the above-mentioned biologists suggest a similar fate for imprudently aggressive predators who are “morelikely to get competitively excluded by other consumers” (2022, 1065). Building
on ecologist Lawrence B. Slobodkin’s conception of prudent predation (1960),
Gutiérrez Al-Khudairy and Rossberg label consumers (both predators and herbivores) ‘prudent’ if they eat sufficiently to sustain their populations, but not somuch that overexploitation of resources becomes detrimental to the survival of
their populations. They introduce the concept of “evolved prudence” that “arises
through the consumer’s adaptation to its native resource community by mutation and selection” (2022, 1055). Gutiérrez Al-Khudairy and Rossberg state thatseveral studies demonstrate how, contrary to inefficient and imprudent predators, prudent predation evolved alongside “the emergence of a steady state inwhich, resulting from the evolutionary adaptation of the consumer’s attack rate(or similar), consumers and resources coexist” (ibid., 1056). And their models,applied to empirical data, suggest that ecological communities emanate feedback
mechanisms that lead to the extirpation of unfavourable (non-prudent) modesof predation.
These recent biological insights into different forms of predation are manifest in Syaman Rapongan’s story excerpt. In its recounted origin history, the indiscriminate mixing of food sources by the Tao ancestors can be considered aform of imprudent predation. After the intervention of the black-winged flying
fish teacher, the Tao people are guided back on the track of prudent predation
through the agreement between sovereign human and fish Nations. The Tao peo-Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation289

ple respect this bond in their treatment and categorisation of the fish and the ceremonial annual cycle. In the contemporary part of Rapongan’s story, and similar
to the transgressive behaviour of the Tao ancestors, the Taiwanese fish industry
mixes the Cilat fish “with mangled shark, mahi-mahi, marlin, other” to sell as abreakfast accompaniment (Rapongan 2021, 131). The Taiwanese fishing boats,carrying with them the dimensions of colonialism and the commodity market ofglobal capitalism, lead to serious disturbances in the ocean ecosystem of Pongso
no Tao, and famine for the Tao people and predatory fish. In the contemporary conflict, however, the Tao fishermen took the role of intervention of theblack-winged flying fish leader, affirming their interspecies bond of prudence,
actively assuming their own cultural sovereignty, and resisting and blocking theinvading ships. As a writer who tells this story cross-culturally to primarily Tao
and Taiwanese (publishing mostly in Taiwan’s official Traditional Chinese, andsometimes bilingually alongside the Tao language) and secondarily international(through translations) readers, Rapongan can be seen as adopting and advocating this role of sovereign and prudent intervention across human cultures.
While communicating cross-culturally in his novels, Syaman Rapongan stays
close to the interspecies heritage of the ocean on which the entire Tao culture
was founded and continues to evolve. By choosing a Cilat fish narrator, Rapongan stays true to the predatory mechanisms that sustain life and inextricably
connect Tao people to the other species in their ocean environment. Today, thisrelationship between species is repeatedly threatened by human intraspecies andintercultural conflicts. Through Rapongan’s literary works, we become aware of
the importance of cultural heterogeneity and interspecies sovereignty that must
be negotiated through prudent predation, allowing animals to be genuine, active, and sovereign beings, teachers and narrators who transmit essential ecological knowledge. Politically, this corresponds to the importance of countering
the loss of Tao language and culture, and resisting colonial extractivism, such asindustrial-scale fishing.

Toward an International Interspecies Alliance?
Inspired by the writings of Syaman Rapongan, I wonder if all humans can become prudent predators. Unlike Western multispecies discourse, I try to thinkand look for how I can live interspecies. The multispecies perspective provides
us with the illusion of a morally safe position at a distance that seeks to makeus contemplate the relationship between humans and animals in an abstract,
analytical, metaphorical, transcendent, universalised, idealised or romantic way.
It aims to represent all animals but lacks the relational, embodied and intimate

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Joeri Verbesselt and Syaman Rapongan

grounding of life-generating acts, such as predation, that also make us animals.
Rapongan’s novels challenge this perspective by showing how capitalism needs
colonialism to gain access to resources and how this extraction can only occur bydestroying human–animal relations. As such, increasing precariousness can befought together with animal Nations through an interspecies alliance united by
the reversible mechanism of prudent predation. This implies that we respect thesovereignty of animals in a relational and reciprocal way, because if one wants tolive with animals, one must also take into account the interests that make their
Nations survive and flourish.
Guided by Indigenous and decolonial thinkers, we know that capitalism cannot be challenged without decoloniality. The Indigenous knowledges I encountered reflect an interspecies alliance that prudently and reciprocally respects allliving beings, on the sovereign terms of the species that humans consume. I prefer the term alliance to an ecological or interspecies class because I am reluctant
to absorb a variety of different actors and contexts under the same umbrella. The
term alliance also complicates the solidarity of non-indigenous outsiders likemyself, because you have to become a member of an alliance and this membership can only be established on the terms of those whose cause you aim to join.
As Potawatomi scholar and activist Kyle Powys Whyte reminds us, such allyshiprequires abandoning privileges such as legal and moral domination, not in theleast the white saviour syndrome, which conjures “the illusion that performing
supportive but ineffectual actions is enough to merit and justify one’s feeling innocent” (Whyte 2018, 237). As I learned from my own interactions with Syaman
Rapongan, allyship must be negotiated during a slow process of relation buildingthat takes several years. Likewise, Rapongan and his Tao ancestors needed morethan a lifetime to negotiate and maintain the interspecies agreement with the fisharound Pongso no Tao.
Storytelling has been an important medium for transmitting relational interspecies knowledge from generation to generation. Indigenous writers continue
to use stories to demonstrate their cultural heterogeneity and ascertain their autonomy and self-determination. During my artistic field research, I encountered
the lifeworlds of the grounded interspecies storytelling by Syaman Rapongan,
Syaman Misiva, Husluman Vava (Bunun Nation), Topas Tamapima (Bunun Nation), Walis Nokan (Tayal Nation) and Ahronglong Sakinu (Paiwan Nation),among others. Their brilliant writings resonate internationally with the literature of other First Nations, highlighting cultural and contextual heterogeneity as
well as political common ground for a potential interspecies alliance, resistanceand resurgence indicated by the capitalised term ‘Indigenous’ (Garneau 2018, 26;
Younging 2018).

Interspecies Storytelling for Prudent Predation291

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List of Contributors

Katrin Becker (M.Ed.) researches and teaches Anglophone literatures and cultures at the University of Siegen, with a particular focus on negotiations of classand classlessness in contemporary British fiction.
Olaf Berwald is Department Chair of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and a Professor of German at Middle Tennessee State University.
Daniel Brookes is a lecturer in film and television at the University of Bristol
whose research encompasses questions of form and aesthetics in documentaryand feature narratives.
Tim Christiaens is an assistant professor of philosophy at Tilburg University in
the Netherlands. He mainly works on critical theory and economic issues likethe digitalisation of work, socio-economic exclusion and neoliberalism.
Christian Claesson is an associate professor of Spanish at the Centre for Languages and Literatures at Lund University, Sweden.
Deborah Dean is an associate professor at Warwick Business School (UK) andco-Director of the Industrial Relations Unit (IRRU) at Warwick University.
Markieta Domecka is a senior lecturer at the University of Roehampton and aformer post-doctoral researcher within the ResPecTMe ERC AdG.
Marissia Fragkou is an assistant professor of theatre at the Aristotle Universityof Thessaloniki, Greece. She is the author of Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First
Century Theatre: Politics, Affect, Responsibility (Bloomsbury 2018).
Liesbeth François is a teaching associate in Modern Latin American Literary andCultural Studies in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Spanish at Downing College.

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Irene Husser is a postdoctoral researcher at the German Department, University
of Tübingen. Her fields of interests involve nineteenth-century to contemporary
literature, media and cultural studies, political theory, sociology of literature, andpopular culture.
Magnus Nilsson is a professor in comparative literature at Malmö University,
Sweden, and the leader of the Research Environment “Precariat, Precarity andPrecariousness in (Post-) Welfare-State Scandinavian Literatures,” which isfunded by the Swedish Research Council.
Sarah Pogoda is a senior lecturer in German Studies at Bangor University(Wales, UK), and founding member of the artist formation NWK-AO (Neue
Walisische Kunst-Aufbauorganisation).
Valeria Pulignano is a professor of sociology, with expertise on work, labour(industrial and employment) relations and labour markets at the Centre for Sociological Research (CESO), KU Leuven. She is coordinator of the European Sociological Association (ESA) RN17 on Work, Employment and Industrial Relations and PI of ERC AdG ResPecTMe.
Syaman Rapongan is an award-winning author from the Pacific island of Pongso no Tao. As a writer-fisherman, he has published extensively on the distinct
tradition of his oceanic Tao heritage in resistance to colonial operations.
Michiel Rys is a postdoctoral researcher of the Flemish Research Foundation(FWO Flanders) in the Research Unit of Literary Studies and Cultural Studies at
KU Leuven, Belgium.
Christoph Schaub is a postdoctoral research associate in German literature andcultural studies at the University of Vechta.
Sula Textor was a teaching and research assistant at Potsdam University witha focus on cultural studies and comparative literatures before focusing on her
work as a literary translator in 2023.
Joeri Verbesselt is an artist-researcher, and member of the Lieven Gevaert Centre(KU Leuven) and ‘deep histories fragile memories’ (LUCA School of Arts, Brussels).
Lander Vermeerbergen is an assistant professor of organisation design and development at Radboud University (Netherlands), Institute for Management Research and a former postdoctoral researcher within ResPecTMe ERC AdG.